


Interim

by gemkazoni



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemkazoni/pseuds/gemkazoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stories cannot ever be finished. Some changes take patience, care, and time. Rue begins to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Summer

**Author's Note:**

> A big thanks to [wayfares](http://wayfares.livejournal.com), [swan_reaper](http://swan-reaper.tumblr.com), and [cellophanerose](http://cellophanerose.tumblr.com) for offering critique and also very kindly reassuring me that this fic does not, in fact, stink. In addition, I originally started writing this for [blacksheep91](http://blacksheep91.livejournal.com/) almost _three_ years ago, and she is honestly amazing for not being angry with me for making her wait that long. I will be posting the remaining sections of this fic over a week or so! It's already finished, so need to worry over whether it will be left hanging or not. It's just so long that I wouldn't feel right unleashing it on the world all at once. 
> 
> The song lyrics at the beginning of each section are from "The Weight of Us" by Sanders Bohlke, which is an overused song but is also incredibly fitting for this story, so there you go.

  


_Summer_  
(there's a cold heart buried beneath / and warm blood, running deep)

  


Their chariot flies for days and nights and does not seem to think of stopping. Above, whispered words are unraveling into oblivion, beckoning them nearer, nearer still. Below, the land is dark and distant, rippling like the pages of a storybook.

At the first color of dawn, Rue wakes. Her face is pale in the dim light. Unthinking, she reaches out, searching for the nearest warmth. 

The prince speaks her name, moving to steady her. He has not slept, too thrilled, too stricken, but still, his hands settle gently upon her as she trembles. With one fingertip, he wipes away a tear that has beaded in her eyelashes. She does not answer.

“Rue,” he says again, softer. 

She breathes in; the air drags across her teeth, sits swollen in her throat. At last, she looks up, her dark, mussed curls wreathed at the edges of her cheeks. She thinks of red – but there is only gold in his eyes, warm, so bright even in the haze of early morning. Her heartbeat stutters then slows at last, reassured.

“A dream,” she murmurs, and they both hear what she does not say. 

He takes her hand. She rests her head upon his shoulder but does not sleep again. The swans beat their wings in perfect rhythm, their whistling breaths like music. 

The chariot flies on.

  


*

  


Siegfried’s castle is just as he has told her, stone and stained glass woven through clouds, the towers nearly dizzying in their elegance. The gates have stiffened with rust and the walls seem to writhe, gnarled vines coiled around their corners, but his smile is still warmer than she has ever seen it.

He reaches to her. Rue hesitates, her lips pulled thin. 

“You will be welcomed with open arms,” he assures her. “Do not be afraid.” 

“Of course,” she says, as though it’s simple. 

It is even lovelier within. Every floor is a clean, white marble, her reflection shimmering beneath her, blithely unmarred. Tapestries flutter against each impossibly large window, their colors faded but still beautiful, precious stones threaded against every other deliberate stitch. Siegfried makes sure she misses not a sight, pointing to this and that, telling her _the kitchen is just around this corner_ and _every year, they would decorate these rooms for the festival_ and _there, I used to play there as a child_. His every feeling is clear, bright in his eyes; he is home, and Rue can’t help but smile.

It isn’t until they’ve wandered through a few corridors, tired but happy, that something seems strange: there is no one around. 

At first, it’s almost amusing, as if everyone’s simply stepped out for a collective afternoon stroll. He leads her to his own quarters on the highest floor, the walls arched and gray, the ornate furniture coated with dust that scatters when touched, burning in the sunlight. They sit by the window, hands entangled, and wait.

An hour passes, then another. The castle sits empty.

It is painfully gradual, the change that comes over her prince. At first, he wanders through the hallways, knocking on doors left open, calling the names of people she does not and will perhaps never know. The tenth call passes without answer, and his voice begins to strain. Walking becomes running, their footsteps seeming the only sound in all the world. The sun brims just beneath the horizon. Soon, it is he who grips to her, stiff and without thought. 

“I will go into town,” he tells her. “Surely, there will be…” 

Rue does not want him to abandon her in this aching silence, but is more unwilling still to see his reaction should he find the town just as unforgiving. She stays. She wanders. She walks in twirling paths across the cobblestone, toes pointed, breaths shallow. She rests in open rooms, touching fingertips to unmade beds, half-full cupboards, clean gowns and tunics hung in armoires, as if washed only the day before. Some tables bear plates set in perfect patterns, still smelling of lunch and dinner. It is like they have vanished in mid-thought, she thinks. It is like the story has simply erased them, without grief, without wonder, without care. 

She presses one palm to a wall. For a moment, she feels not stone, but paper, buckling beneath her touch.

  


*

  


For months, they wait. What else is there to do? This is Siegfried’s home, and Rue knows he will not abandon it, not without some measure of truth, some semblance of peace. They must stay. They must see if anyone returns for him.

After a day, they trade their elaborate garments for simpler attire, folding them in careful patterns and hiding them away in drawers where they will not be seen again for days, weeks, months. They have not yet been married, but still, they sleep together in his bed, Siegfried’s arms curled around her, hands pressed to the low of her back as if forming a mime she cannot see. Rue prefers to rest her head upon his chest, his heartbeat echoing all through her, steady and warm. 

Each day is similar, gentle in its activities. They take walks in the morning, read from the library as evening eases the light away. They fill the silence with pleasant talk of things that do not matter. Siegfried often tells her tales from the time before he left his story, finding comfort in such memories. After a while, they find pairs of toe shoes in an unassuming room, wrapped in cloth and stiff from disuse but not too worn – there were surely performers and artists here once in such a large kingdom, after all, and besides, who is to say whether ballet can exist in one story and not another - so in every room, they dance, Rue humming broken notes of songs she’s long forgotten to lead their steps, Siegfried catching her when she wavers, overcome. Wanting to be kept busy, she elects herself to prepare their meals, brushing aside Siegfried’s gentle insistence that it would be only fair to take turns. They find impossibly fresh food in the depths of the kitchen, recipes left neatly arranged on flour-stained tables. Cooking, she soon discovers, is not a talent of hers, her dishes dark and distinct, but still, he eats them all without the slightest of hesitation, thanking her with a kiss at the crease of her mouth each time. 

She will never speak it out loud, _never_ – but Rue knows she could spend an eternity like this, her and her prince and no one else. Once, she dreamed endlessly of moments like this, of a time when distractions would cease to exist and no one could come close. She is not strong enough to deny herself a private sort of pleasure at this outcome – and yet, her prince walks with a weight at his shoulders, his eyes grave as he looks upon his empty kingdom. Every day, he leaves her for a time to venture through the land, searching. Every day, he returns alone. 

Rue waits. She does not want to see him in pain, to watch the light in his eyes be stifled – and yet, a small, sharp part of her wonders why she is not enough. She understands, of course she understands. She knows so well of his people, that he cared for them and protected them and gave of his very heart to save them, but she cannot help this aching, this fear. She waits, convinced that this will be the day he will not return, that he will find them at last and stay where they have gone, forgetting even her name. She is different from what she once was, yes, but not as different as he believes. Her ugliness has been smothered, but not silenced. Rue is still selfish. Rue is still afraid. Rue still wants and wants and will never have enough. 

_You have caused this_ , the Raven’s blood whispers to her when all is quiet. _You have driven them all away. There is no room in this story for such darkness_. 

But Siegfried returns all the same, brightening when he sees her, his arms open and beckoning her close. She watches him eat the dinner she has prepared and suddenly feels tears sliding down the swell of her cheeks, hot and pricking.

He looks to her with widened eyes, his hand reaching out at once to touch her own. “What’s the matter?” 

She responds by kissing him, fast and hard. Her hands crumple tight to his neck as though he may slip through her fingers by mistake, like water, like sand. There was a time when he sat still and silent as she moved to touch him, a ghost against her skin, his eyes open and burning her very insides with their emptiness – but now he meets her lips fully, urging her closer. His hands tangle in her hair. She smiles against his mouth. 

Rue is still selfish, still wanting – but perhaps if she learns not to be afraid, the darkness in her will quiet, and the rest will soon follow.

  


*

  


It is summer when a voice that is not theirs echoes through the castle. They are preparing to dance, as they often do when there is nothing else to fill the silence. Siegfried lingers in his stretches, his breaths long and steady. Rue ties her toe shoes, the ribbons soft against her dry skin. A dark curl of hair tickles at her nose, and she reaches to tuck it back.

The sound brims all around them without warning. Her fingertips still against the crook of her ear. He looks up, and they share a glance, a mutual warm look of oh, our imagination, surely –

Another shout, more urgent, and Siegfried runs for the door. 

By the time Rue arrives in the entryway, half-knotted ribbons trailing at her heels, an old man she has never seen before is wobbling on his knees against the marble, kissing her prince’s hands. 

“I had heard rumors,” he cries over and over again, as though it isn’t being heard each time before. Siegfried’s smile is breathtaking in its joy. He must know this person, Rue thinks. He looks as if an official of some sort. A priest long out of practice, perhaps.

“Some have seen you,” the man says. “Oh, they have seen you, but it was thought an illusion, a demon sent to torment, and so they hid –”

He notices her standing at the stairs then. Siegfried introduces her, speaks her name as though it is the most beautiful word in all the world, but the man’s kind face distorts as she nears. He looks into her eyes. He presses a kiss, only one, to her knuckles. At once, she feels his fear against her. Rue pulls from his grip too quickly, her teeth caught on the greeting she had meant to give. 

They move to the kitchen. She finds herself unwilling to sit between them, feeling sturdier if she stands at a distance, and so she prepares tea. The man tells Siegfried of what has happened.

They waited, his people. They knew their prince was surely suffering in some far-away land, the Raven’s hunger merciless; they knew time had somehow halted in its tracks, the trees forever darkened with the weight of late autumn, their clothes and books and buildings like new no matter how much use they weathered. His people prayed. They hoped with all their might for his triumphant return. They sought and sang and sacrificed, their hearts full and aching – but what felt like ten lifetimes passed and answers did not come.

The change seeped in, then. It seemed like mere illness at first, bodies withering, skin thinned and pale like paper. Then, in the midst of a daily vigil, someone cried out. A child had broken at the seams, crumpling in a mess of color and parchment, as though never even human to begin with. Others followed, always at the simplest, most horrible of times – mid-meal, mid-song, mid-sentence. No one could fathom a way in which to stop such a thing, for there were no ailments, no warnings; a person was simply there and then not. Many grew hysterical, convinced it was the Raven’s final curse, and so they fled the land in droves, never to return. Others remained, ever hopeful, and – well, the man says darkly. Their fates are clear enough. 

A spot of tea spits from the kettle onto Rue’s wrist, but she feels nothing. With a harsh breath, she turns her head to steal a glimpse at the man at the table. Only just now, having heard of colors and parchments and people who were no longer people does she realize what is odd about him. His body moves strangely, the shape of him thin, his colors slow and too absolute, like an illustration in a storybook. She imagines touching him only to see paint smudged in the lines of her palms.

Her prince sits rigid in his chair, hardly breathing. The man glances to her, his eyes furtive, and she looks away.

“I’ve forgotten the cups,” Rue says, even though they are in the cupboard just above her head. She slips out into the hall then pulls the door shut behind her. Her back settles softly against the wood. 

Siegfried’s voice is hoarse, uneven. “What could have caused this?”

“It is impossible to know for sure,” the man answers with equal graveness. “Of course, it could be the Raven’s curse, as so many feared. Perhaps the land could not bear the burden of so much time having passed without you. Perhaps something vital has simply seeped away. Clearly, we have been abandoned by a higher power,” he says. “Or…”

“What is it?” 

A pause. Rue cannot see for herself, but she knows he is looking to every depth of the room, making sure she has truly gone. Her hands settle to her chest, fingers curled like wings to keep her heart warm, to brace it for what is coming next. 

“The girl.” 

“Rue,” Siegfried corrects at once. 

The man sighs. “This may seem a mere fantasy,” he continues, “but I always believed you would return at last fulfilled, perhaps with a beautiful royal to take as your princess. You have certainly heard of other ruined lands near us, in which such a marriage restored it to its former glory and beyond. Why, news recently came to me of a kingdom not far from here. It is said that their prince was once a monster, a beastly shadow of his former self, and his marriage to a virtuous woman who loved him despite it brought prosperity to --” 

Siegfried gently interjects. “What has this to do with us?”

“My prince, does it not seem best to follow suit? It is the best chance we have to restore our home to splendor. Tragedies may be reversed! Life will return here and flourish yet again!” 

“Perhaps it still will. When Rue and I are married, I am sure that –” 

It is the man’s turn to cut in with vigor, his gentleness chipping away. “I am not blind,” he snaps. “That girl is not a royal nor does she have a worthy heart. Far, _far_ from it. You must see what I see, dear Siegfried. I do not even have to look. I am simply near her and all I smell is blood! It cannot be hidden! It will never –” 

“That is _enough_ ,” Siegfried orders, and Rue will not hear anymore. She enters at once, her breath shallow, lamenting her foolishness for having not realized the cups were already present. The men offer her half-true smiles and turn their conversation towards trivialities, though not for long – the priest takes his leave while the sun is still high in the sky, promising to return in due time for “further discussion.” Rue watches from a high window, looking not to him but to Siegfried, who walks with him to the gates. 

They lay in bed that night, their breathing an uneven rhythm. Rue sighs and raises her chin only to see that his eyes are still open, dim shapes of gold turned towards the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

He smiles and touches a cold hand to her cheek, but says nothing.

She does not sleep that night.

  


*

  


It is not even dawn and she is already in the kitchen, kettles whistling and fire crackling. Anything to fill the hollowness of these rooms; anything to quiet the thrumming of her blood. She buries herself in the work, plates set in lovely arrangements, the food warm and for once not burnt. Rue closes her eyes and inhales, savoring this moment of perfection; she has known so few. With soft footsteps, she goes to wake him, pausing briefly before a mirror to frown at the gaunt color just beneath her eyes.

Their room is empty. 

She steadies herself against the half-open door. Calls for him, but hears no answer. Drags sticky fingertips along his place in bed, still warm, where she’d seen him resting not an hour ago. Her breath thins and turns cold. Her heart is a bell, ringing, ringing. My prince, she thinks. He has gone. I have lost him.

Rue searches. Her footsteps beat against the stone, brusque, lonely sounds. With each silent room passed, she moves more recklessly, her skirt tumbling roughly against the sharp sway of her legs. At the curve of the staircase, she passes a window – only to stop, and with wide eyes, return to it. The new sun falls in waves along the field. Siegfried stands amidst it, his back turned to her, half-melted within the color and light. Breathless, she hurries to the door and is there in only a moment, mere feet from him, the wind tangling in her curls. She feels silly now, _ridiculous_ even, her cheeks darkening with color. What was she thinking, acting so irrationally? Of course he hadn’t…

Something in her trembles. Instead of calling out, she erases the distance; unthinking, she holds him from behind, her arms tight around the breadth of his chest.

He stiffens then relaxes, warm against her. “Rue,” he says, chuckling. He raises a hand to rest against her own, his palm pressed just so to where her grip meets, fingers strained. “Good morning. I had wondered where you’d gone.” 

Rue says nothing. She is so weak, helpless to do anything but clutch him tighter, bury herself in this desperate intimacy, his touch and his sound and his smell seeming all around her. Her lips press to his shoulder, unraveling in a harsh sigh. She wants to say: Stay. Don’t leave me. I need you. The words wither, swollen in her throat. She does not know how to set them free.

He says her name once more, his hand tightening over her own. “Is something wrong?” 

One breath, then another. They do not come easily. She shifts her fingers, curved just so: love, soft against him. If she cannot speak it, she will show him with her hands, her toes, her sway and rise, as only dancers know how. 

“I thought you had gone,” she says. 

He smiles. “Where would I have gone?” He asks, honestly baffled, and it is as if the day before never even happened.

They eat their breakfast there in the dip of the field, the rising sun warm on their faces, their hands quickly dirtied and sticking to the grass, still thick with dew. Birds come, attracted by the food, and Siegfried feeds them from his palm, laughing when they chirp and nestle against his curled fingers. He gives a little robin to Rue to hold, but it falls silent as her hands tighten around it. Instead of singing, it nips at her palm, wanting to be set free. 

“You are afraid,” he says once she’s released it. Rue turns her head sharply at the words, and it’s enough to send the entire flock briefly into the air, feathers ruffled. “Trust them, and they will trust you.”

When her cup is empty, he goes to fetch the kettle for her. Rue is left alone, watching the birds as they linger a short distance away, chirping amongst themselves as they peck at the grass. A memory comes to mind, silly, irrelevant in every way: one late afternoon, passing her dormitory at the Academy, when she had heard birds and glanced up only to see Ahiru at her high window, feeding them, laughing as they swarmed around her. A smile twitches at the corners of Rue’s lips. 

Ahiru was never afraid, she thinks, and tries once more.


	2. Autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some stories cannot ever be finished; some changes take patience, care, and time. Rue begins to heal.

  


_Autumn_  
(the rights and wrongs invade us / an innocent song)

  


Summer turns to fall, and even as the leaves wrinkle with dark color, as the birds draw their wings close and look southward, Rue is still trying. She feels ridiculous, like a child playing games when it is time to be serious, but still, she goes alone to the forest’s edge often, beckoning to the bluebirds in the trees, her rigid hands filled with crumbs. She knows not why she still struggles with this, only that there is something to prove in winning one’s favor, something small and simple but decidedly crucial to her wanting heart. 

It is on a day like this that she sees it: a shimmer of white within the forest, so brief that at first, Rue believes it to be only her imagination. Still, a rustling of leaves echoes near her, and there it is again, fleetingly, as quick and careful as an animal. It’s a swan, perhaps, or even an odd-colored duck. The idea warms something cold in her, and she steps into the trees after it. If any creature were to see something good in her, she thinks, it would surely be a duck. 

With a few paces, she finds herself at the bank of a pond, the water clear and still, torn petals spiraling in patterns on its surface like a hundred plucked he-loves-me-not’s. Rue steadies a hand against her chest; she pulls her shawl tight even though it is not cold. An elegant figure is across the way, all curls and feathers, the color of fresh snow. It dances across the water’s surface, oblivious to her. It is like a swan, but no, she can see human limbs, dark amidst the white. A face, seeming made of porcelain and painted color. Hair as bright as stars. It is not possible, it _cannot_ be, but –

Tutu, she thinks, and no longer remembers how to breathe. 

The wind strengthens, shriveled leaves plucked from their branches, rustling in the air all around her. The woman turns and meets her eyes, and it is like a memory long since passed, once buried but now grown whole again before her very eyes. Rue can feel her blood burning, hissing. Despite it, she moves closer. Unthinking, she starts to speak. “You are…” 

With soft steps, the woman in white meets her at the bank, and it is then that Rue sees her as she truly is. The garments she wears are dull, cobbled together with little more than crooked stitches and thread. Her face is young yet her hair is thin and white, very unkempt. She is a mere girl, and Rue doesn’t understand why, for just a moment, she saw a creature of Magic and Wonder in her place.

“I know what you are thinking of me. I see it in your eyes,” the woman says, and smiles, still lovely even in such awful disarray. “I apologize, for I am not, nor was I ever the princess of yore.” 

And so she tells Rue her tale, there in the shadows beneath darkened, dying trees. Once upon a time, she was not a princess but a lady, beloved and true, devoted to Tutu – not the Tutu Rue knew, but the one whose illustration in a storybook she once touched with careful fingertips. Tutu was not a true royal, but one of mere myth, the subject of countless folklore and fantasies among the townspeople. Yet she lived all the same, a young, graceful woman who made her home in the woods just beyond the kingdom with the ducks and swans. She often cared for children abandoned or lost in such treacherous depths. Five girls, the woman in white included, loved her and vowed to stay always; thus, they became her ladies and led happy lives for a spell, accompanying her to balls and festivals, comforting her as she admired the prince from afar. Oh, how she loved him. Oh, how she wanted to be near him always. But soon, the land grew dark and cold. Ravens poured from the sky like rain. Their King descended, starving, and – well, what happened soon after is known well enough, the woman says with sad eyes, and Rue must look away.

She continues. After Tutu vanished, three of her ladies took up the swords of fallen men and followed her, aiming in their grief to carve out their own hearts and serve them as meals. One remained amidst the chaos, vowing to stay and see what survived of the kingdom – but the woman in white could not find the strength to be so brave, and so she fled with several others to another land. 

She takes Rue‘s hand then. “You must tell me the truth,” she says, “for I have heard rumors that the prince has returned, alive and well. I have come all this way simply so I may see for myself, but I have been afraid to approach the castle. Oh, please!” 

Rue flinches at such a bold touch, but it goes unnoticed by this girl, this woman who has grown and suffered but whose eyes have remained those of a child’s, desperate and eager. Her lips purse, then thin. _Lie_ , the Raven’s blood tells her. She cannot. 

“It’s true,” she answers. “He is here, and I with him.” 

If the woman is surprised by her curtness, by the words in which she stakes her strength, she does not show it. Her smile is dazzling, and it is not long before she is following at Rue’s heels, sighing as they move within the castle’s shadow. Just before the doors, Siegfried is waiting for her, his palms cupped close to a brimming teacup. He notices the woman at once, but still, he comes to her first, talking worriedly of coming winter chill as he passes the tea to her, and oh, despite it all, Rue can’t help but smile.

He turns to Tutu’s lady then. She says nothing of the past; she asks not a question about the Raven or his fate. She does not make a mention of Tutu, though in the lines of her face, the rise and fall of her chest, Rue sees that she wishes to. She only curtsies, wobbling on crooked ankles. “I am glad,” she says, and it is enough. Siegfried’s smile is warm – as it would be at the sight of any person from his long-abandoned land, of course, of _course_. Still, the woman is blushing, and Rue’s careful hands falter, drops of tea left burning on the grass.

He invites her to stay in the castle, the weather colder and colder with each day that passes, but she gently refuses. She wishes to remain in the forest, a long-ago home she has sorely missed, and so she returns there, disappearing past its dark edge as the sun sinks behind it. 

That night, Rue prepares dinner. Her hands curl and bend, kissed with flour. Unthinking, she bites her lip and flinches at the taste of blood, speckled along her tongue.

_Coward_ , the Raven’s blood says of her. It presses just beneath the skin, as though meaning to claw its way out. 

Her elbows fold against the wood, scrapes burning just above the bone. A bowl spins on its side, but she cannot move to steady it. Please, she thinks. Please stop. _Please_. 

_Pure and true, like you will never be. They will say he should marry her. He will marry her. The story will go on and leave you behind. It is ruined. You have ruined it._

Rue feels as she is made of thread and stitches, twisted so tight she is ripping at the seams. For days, she sleeps little, and when she does, she dreams. She dreams of being small and thirsty, bowing under black wings, the muscles in her throat clutching at the taste of blood, foul and thick, so much like dying. She dreams of Kraehe, her lips and nails sticky as she devours a warm heart. Rue wakes and still tastes it, so sweet in her mouth. Feathers prick at her skin, even though none are there. 

_My beloved, ugly daughter_ , the Raven whispers at the edge of every darkness. _Did you think you could be rid of me so easily? For years and years, you ate of my rage. You bathed in my hate. You drank of my soul so greedily. How long will you pretend to have forgotten? Look at your monstrous heart and tell me I am not still within it._

Leave me, she begs. She begs it of the night, of the coming cold, of the churning deep within her. Leave me, or swallow me whole. There can no longer be an in-between.

  


*

  


Then, there is a raven.

Rue stops at the top of the stairwell, carrying several garments wrinkled with wind and sun; she’d carried them out into the field for an afternoon, airing out a dour smell they’d gathered from the dressers. At first, its color seems like a strand of hair, straying in the crease of her gaze. She lifts a hand to bat it away, only to find nothing there. She turns and hears its harsh cry a moment too late, for she has already glimpsed it at the windowsill. The clothes tumble from her arms, settling in a ring at her feet. 

It is aged, she sees. It is suffering, its wings thin, its breaths labored. It does not look away from her, eyes bright and burning, as she takes one step then another. She knows not what she does. There is nothing in her mind; her heart beats blank and still. With one hand, she reaches out to touch it.

The raven shrieks and claws at her palm.

Her mouth is open, but she cannot speak. Lines of blood form quick, stinging, and she brings the hand tight to her chest. The raven cries out again and then crumples into pieces. All that is left is a stain, black against the stone, smelling of ink and iron. 

Much later – she cannot remember what happened in the time between – she is in the kitchen. “Try to stay still,” Siegfried says as he dabs the wounds clean, holding tight when she flinches. Her lips pull thin with pain. He smiles when she looks up at him, but still, she wonders what he is thinking, sitting so near, the foul odor of blood and feathers thick in the air. 

“It is me,” she says. She does not mean to, but the words tear their way out, so heavy that she is rendered hoarse with the weight of them. “They’ve followed. If it were not for me, then—” 

“Shh,” he whispers. His fingertips press softly to the edge of one cut, still throbbing. “It did not follow you. It means nothing.” 

She is trembling. The words come quicker now, thick in the low of her throat. “What if more return?”

He sets aside the washcloth. With both hands, he takes her curled fingers and lifts them, so suddenly that she falls silent. His soft mouth grazes across her knuckles; his breath burns just below her wrist. Eyes closed, he kisses one fingertip, than the next, than the next. “You said,” he says in snippets as he moves across her splayed hand, “that it was aged and hurt. You said that it died soon after. Surely it was the last, left over from before.” 

Yes, but don’t you see, is what she wants to say. Those are only words. I don’t know how to let them in. I don’t know how to not be afraid. Her lips part; she can only breathe, in then out, in then out. She cannot speak again. She cannot speak. She has forgotten how. 

Siegfried holds her uninjured hand tight in his now, his eyes soft. “We are free of them, Rue,” he tells her. “It is an end, not a beginning.” 

The next kiss is against her mouth, and Rue holds him close, pretending with all her heart to believe it.

  


*

  
That night, they go to the garden. Autumn has fallen heavy on the land, but here there is still life, petals curled towards the sun, leaves thick and clinging to dark-colored branches. Without a human touch, the plants have become wild. There is green, endless and fragile. There is color amidst it, bright in spots like stars. The scent of flowers, all around them.

Rue sighs. Her bandaged hand is stiff and held close to her heart. Siegfried moves a few steps ahead of her, his shadow strong in the setting sun. He turns, looks to her once then again, and she knows he has noticed the dark beneath the eyes; she knows that by doing this, he is only wishing to lighten her spirits. She smiles, bending to touch one nail to a petal. “My prince,” she calls after him, teasing. “Isn’t it too dark?” 

“Not at all,” he answers, his steps light upon the grass and dirt. “There is just enough light.” 

The sun is a thin line above the forests’ edge. She follows him, a branch nearly tripping her at the bend. “I’m sorry it’s become like this,” she says. Leaves crowd close, rustling low like a wreath above her head. At her ankles, flowers shiver and sigh in the wind. “When spring comes, we can tend to it.”

“I am not worried,” he says, and has circled, once again beside her, near her, warm against the shape of her back. He takes up the curl of her fingers, his other hand soft on her waist. With bright eyes, he leads her forward so that her steps spiral in a circle: one, two, three, four. They are dressed too formally for this – no light to lead their movement, no structure to steady against if someone should waver. She is not wearing toe-shoes, but Rue still feels every bone in her feet as they arch and steady, slaves to routine. 

“It is true that this place has fallen into disarray,” he says, and the words fit just so in the curve of her neck. “It has seen hardship, yes, and has suffered so much without care or love. Perhaps the plants have given up hope themselves that it will ever get better, even.”

A breath hitches in her throat. The wind curls like ribbons, whispering through the space between their bodies. The air is thick and smells of grass, of dew, of sun and stars. 

“To me, there is so much beauty here,” he says, and they are words meant not for trees or vines. He looks at her; she looks down, to the weeds tickling at her ankles, to the flowers that brim and thrive despite them. “There has always been beauty here,” he says, quiet, at the crook of her ear. She closes her eyes. I do not deserve this, she thinks. I do not deserve you, she means to say but does not. When she opens them again, he has moved in front of her, his smile warm, his hands held out. 

For a moment, they stand still, there in a garden once lovely.

“Dance with me,” he says.

She does.

  


*

  


She thinks to leave once.

Autumn has been long and cold and has given her much time to think, think of the story and its every careful piece, think of all that is wrong and can never be right. From this, Rue has realized several things. 

The first: the priest was right. In this land, she may not be the one who caused the darkness, but it is she who sustains it, keeps its heart full and beating. Her blood has made sure of it. 

The second: stories follow paths. Such paths are pliable, easily manipulated by well-placed words, but there are paths, nonetheless, and without them, tales would tear at the seams. Rue is not sure what this particular story’s path was meant to lead to, but she knows it was not her waiting at the end, for no one – not her, not Tutu, not even its own author anticipated that the prince, beautiful and bright, would choose to love the Raven’s false daughter most of all. With this thought, Rue hides her selfish smile firm against her wrist, for therein lies the problem. An abandoned tale suffers, but can always find its way once more. It is when a story leaps from its framework – diverts, bereft of reason or rhyme – that it collapses. She cannot be sure of this, but in her bones, she is certain it is true. She was never meant for a happy ending. The story knows this, and is smothered by her weight. 

The third: If she were only a princess in her own right, all would be well. If she were pure-hearted, good and true, like all the maidens in tales she once read about with hungry eyes, the strings of this dying story would tug tight and adapt. After all, is that not how most tales of princes and problems come to a close? It is a tried-and-true ending, as easy to slip into as a piece of old clothing. Such a change would be unexpected to this particular story, yes, but familiar and foolproof, leaving few loose ends in its inclusion. The story would be saved. A path could be forged from it, she is sure. But Rue will not and will never fit into such a mold. Those maidens never bled hatred or wanting. They never dressed in black or wore frowns upon their lips or bore darkness in their eyes. The story cannot adapt to such a drastic character as she. Not once has a fairytale ended with the words _and the prince married a dark and selfish girl_.

And so the end is coming, quickly, horribly. The forest and sky waver more with each passing day, ripped and discolored like paper in water. Even the castle has begun to moan. And her prince. Oh, her prince. He smiles for her always, still. To him, it seems her every feeling is the world and his own stand small beside them – but when he thinks she isn’t not looking, his eyes are on each window and away. He has realized it by now, she knows. There will never be another fall festival, grand ball, crowded marketplace. No one is coming back.

That night, she comes to bed late, having lingered in the library, paper cuts pressed deep into her fingertips. Siegfried is already asleep. He rests on his back, his arms held straight, his breaths low and whistling. His chest rises then falls, as gentle as a sigh.

Rue sits beside him. Unthinking, she reaches out to brush away a loose strand of hair from his face. Her hand lingers, her fingers drawing a path from his brow to his nose to his chin. Her palm fits snug against the swell of his cheek. He feels almost feverish. 

What if he cannot bear the weight of this? The loss of his home, his very story. It is too much. It is worth far more than her love. This, she knows. 

She removes her hand and sets it on the sheets. If he were to marry another, than – and remembers Tutu’s lady with her bright eyes, soiled and scarred but still oh-so-lovely. A violent feeling churns deep in her stomach, but if it is hate burning there, she pretends otherwise. Rue dressed and danced and made her bed in such a feeling for far too long; there is no more comfort to be found there. She is tired of hating. Oh, how she is tired. 

She looks away, to the far window, dark and stars like a painting within its frame. The chariot that carried them here still rests on a far hill, just outside the forests. It would be easy to lure the swans back to their reins with scraps. By dawn, she could be little more than a dream, long-melted into the horizon. 

Siegfried reaches to the other side of the bed; dreaming, he says her name. For a long moment, Rue is still. Then, with twin brusque movements, she kicks off her shoes and lies beside him. Her head settles just so under his chin. At once, his arms curl around her, crossed like wings at the low of her back. She brushes her lips across his chest – across the spot where his heart rests just below, whole and beating.

  


*

  


Winter is coming, and with it, the stomp and clack of horses’ hooves, a swelling thunder in the distance. A day after the first frost, twenty red-faced men arrive at the gates upon dark stallions, their coats speckled with ice. The priest leads them. Rue watches from the bedroom window. Siegfried stands at the door, his smile warm but careful, so careful as she turns and sees him there.

“Are you ready?” He asks.

There is nowhere to hide in this land, no place to go where they cannot follow. She sees these words in his eyes, grave in the space between them, and she knows he‘s surely realized by now that she heard what the priest said of her, so harsh that it bled through closed kitchen doors. 

“Of course,” she answers, and moves to walk beside him. 

And so they go to meet them, the castle soon alive with footsteps, with boisterous greetings and shouts. Her prince easily calls each man by name, shaking their hands, refusing to let them bow before him. She is surprised at first to see that they don’t shy away from her, each of them removing their wide-brimmed hat and kissing her hand, their lips dry and cold. Their gazes are quick to dart, though, from her to Siegfried to the priest, standing grave-faced in the corner, and Rue is not fooled. They are hunters, who know better than to capture their monster outright. 

They’ve not even finished half-full cups of steaming tea before the priest asks for everyone to move into another room. “One apt for private discussion,” he says, and all of the men set their saucers down at once. Siegfried insists that Rue be allowed to join, his hand gripped tight to hers, but she stills at the bend of the hall, her thoughts tangling with what the priest has surely told them, with what they’ll call her, brand her, accuse her of doing or not doing all with no semblance of discretion. Her imagination proves cruel. 

“No,” she tells him, her hand soft as she removes his. “I will be fine.” 

They are not worth my time, she almost continues with, full of quick, false bravado, strength come and gone. It will not help anything, she knows. She bites her lip instead. In turn, Siegfried nods and says nothing more, the weight in her voice not lost on him. Still, she feels his eyes on her back, following her until she turns at a corner and is gone. 

Rue escapes. She does not wish to hear echoes, ghosts of words and shouts that will surely brim all through the castle, and so she ventures outside, her footsteps stark on the frozen ground, her every breath colored and hanging in the sky like white ornaments. She wears a thick shawl around her shoulders, but her face has already spotted with red. She will bear it. 

She goes to the garden. A foolish idea, she realizes, for there is nothing to see there any longer. Trees huddle close, bare and blackened. Where flowers once curled towards the sun, there is now only sleet and dirt and crumpled, ice-kissed stems. She walks through it all, walks further and further and further still and soon, Rue has gone so far that she comes across something impossible. There, at the edge of the field: a ring of bright-colored daisies, their faces turned upward to a half-covered sun, wholly untouched by the chill. She catches her breath, bending to touch one. Perhaps there is magic here yet, she thinks.

Struck, she settles on her knees and moves to gather a few. Her hands move of their own accord; her fingertips are nimble as they dance across the stems, soft enough not to crumple a single piece as she bends and folds the flowers around one another. 

It does not take long for her to complete a wreath. She sets it down within the ocean of her skirt gently, as if it were something truly precious. For a moment, she thinks not of foolish men, angry words, stories dead and dying. She looks at her hands and remembers when they were once small. Yes – little hands, calloused palms, fingers chubby and clumsy and nothing at all like the claws of a raven. A little heart, too. One that always felt much too big, beating through every trembling finger and toe as they sat together beneath that golden tree. 

_Do you like it, my prince?_

_I don’t know._

Short of breath, she turns – but there is no one there. The tree behind her is dark, bare.

“What is that?” 

She turns back. In the dip of the field just before the forest’s edge, Tutu’s lady stands. Her hair is tangled with wind and sleet, ice speckled on her reddened cheeks like burning stars. Rue’s heart seizes. She pulls her skirt over the wreath.

“Nothing,” she says, and it sounds much sharper than she means it to. “It’s none of your concern.” 

The woman, as usual, is unaffected. She steps closer, stumbling onto her scratched knees like an eager child would. She isn’t even trembling.

Rue holds her head high, her lips firm and thin. “Are you not cold?” She asks. 

Tutu’s lady smiles. “I have lived many winters in this forest,” she says. “One becomes accustomed soon enough.” She looks over Rue’s head then, towards the castle, a dark shape against a white sky. “Why are you not with the prince? Is he well?”

Rue flinches; she hides her dark eyes in the turn of her shoulder. Do not speak as though you fit into our life, she wants to say. You know nothing of him or me or the ways we have suffered, she wants to say. The words settle harsh in her throat, but she bites them back. “He is within,” she says, her shoulders held straight, every bit the prima donna to this amateur, “talking to foolish men and discussing my…future, as it were.” 

She expects a tell-tale look to flash across the woman’s face, one of pity and fear, one that gives away what she surely has known about Rue all along. It does not come. The woman blinks, her eyes wandering. Her little mouth crinkles. “Why?”

Rue stares at her. After a long moment, she laughs bitterly. “Do not pity me,” she snaps. “It is painfully obvious what I am. Or are you really that naïve? Do you not remember the ravens when they came and killed the people here? Do you not see them in my eyes? Look!” 

Tutu’s lady is silent for a moment. Both shoulders sink, her neck a flash of pale color amidst her crumpled dress. Her body is wavering, Rue realizes. It has become like the priest’s, her colors whole and slow, her limbs thin as parchment.

“You smell like them,” she finally admits, only to smile once more. “I do not think you are one of them, though. I do not think you are really like them.”

Rue is still. Then with harsh hands, she takes the wreath from under her skirt and throws it a fair distance away, into a mess of dirt and shriveled plants. The woman watches it pass through the air with careful eyes, but does not move. “It was lovely,” she begins to say. Her voice is soft, so soft. It makes something in Rue hurt. “Honestly, I –” 

“Are you in love with him?” 

She cannot hold it back any longer. She strains one hand across her chest, close to the ardent thrumming of her heart. In the words, she hears all of Kraehe’s cruelty. It frightens her in a way few other things do. 

As always, the woman does not notice such harshness. Her face merely colors, a flush of red brimming at the tips of both ears. Her mouth is a gaping, silent shape. It reminds Rue of Ahiru, so obvious in her every feeling, but the memory hurts more than helps, and she has to look away. 

After what feels like an eternity, she takes a breath and smiles. “Nearly my entire life, I spent at her side,” she says, the words so gentle they seem like raindrops, pitter-pattering in the breath of earth between them. “In time, her voice seemed to come from my mouth. Her thoughts, always in the air around me. Does it not seem natural that her every feeling would become my own?” 

Both women look at one another, there in a black garden. Rue clutches her wrist so tight that the skin there begins to sting. The Raven’s blood hisses against every one of her bones. It is strange, though – for the first time, she does not find it unbearable. There are other words, a soft warmth above it all, like sunlight after a storm. There is still her own voice. 

Her grip relaxes. Her lips flutter, briefly held in a tired smile. She sighs, and the sound of it rings hollow in her mouth, more sad than bitter.

“Well then,” she hears herself say, hoarse. “Maybe he really should marry you instead.” 

At once, the woman’s eyes light up. “Ah,” she says. Her hands rise, as though to bring Rue to her. “There. There! That is why you are not like them.” 

But the moment has passed, and Rue feels herself crumble, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. You foolish child, she thinks, and shakes her head. “I did not mean it,” she says. “Can’t you tell? It was a lie.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tutu’s lady insists, and suddenly she is there, her bare knees grazing the fringe of Rue’s skirt, her eyes close enough for their color to be clear: blue, soft. “It doesn’t matter,” she says again, gentler, and touches Rue’s cheek, her palm fitting snug against near-frozen skin. “To say it means such a kind feeling lives inside of you. Don’t you see?”

Rue does not flinch, nor think to pull away. The woman‘s hand is warm. Her smile, so bright.

“I am sure of it,” she says. “You are simply a very brave girl.” 

The sun reappears as a greedy cloud passes at last; the wind picks up, startling in its harshness. In a rush, Rue comes back into herself. She pulls away from the woman suddenly, as if having been burnt, and stands. Her heart heaves and tumbles, clattering like fallen glass in her chest; her throat is sore with all the words she cannot say. She wants to say – but she turns and runs instead, kicking up vines and stems, her limbs numb and burning beneath her stiff skirt. She does not look back until she has reached the castle doors, until their shadows have encompassed her. When she does, Tutu’s lady is gone.

  


*

  


She eats dinner alone; she waits in their room through the night, the silence smothering her, too heavy to bear. Siegfried does not come to bed until there is already color glistening on the horizon, his every movement heavy. Rue pretends to sleep. Through half-lidded eyes, she watches as he removes his shoes and shirt, each turn of his arm deliberate, thickened by the shadows.

“Rue,” he says. With a harsh breath, she turns on her side, but Siegfried only laughs, crossing to the bed. With one hand, he takes up the mess of the tangled sheets, spreading it evenly over the rise and fall of her body. With the other, he touches her face. His thumb brushes her bowed eyelashes. “Why are you not asleep?” 

She should have known he would not be easily fooled, and with a smile that is tired, sad, but wholly warm, she looks up at him. “What did they say?” 

He smiles as well. His hand moves, from her face to the wild ocean of her hair. “Nothing I did not already expect them to say.” 

She is quiet. Her curls spread at his touch, seeping across the white of their sheets like an approaching storm. The line of her neck flashes beneath them, trembling.

“It is too cold to travel now,” he says, and his palm, warm, stills her. “They will have to stay.” 

“Of course.” 

He slumps down beside her and brushes a clumsy kiss across her cheek. “The worst is over,” he says, and then is gone, drowned in his exhaustion. Rue is still. She waits until he begins to snore, then covers him with the sheets. Outside, the sun rises, swollen like a flame as it burns through dark and clouds. 

Below, she can hear footsteps, heavy on the stone.


	3. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some stories cannot ever be finished; some changes take patience, care, and time. Rue begins to heal.

  


_Winter_  
(i'm not ready / i'm not ready / for the weight of us)

  


And so they stay. The winter months spread out before Rue like a sea, interminable, so far-reaching that she cannot hope to see the shore on the other side. Each day digs its nails deep into the ground and holds fast. Every hour is palpable, its tension thick in her skin, her throat, the pull and push of every bone. What else is there to do but bear it? Spring will come.

For the most part, the men do not bother her, though it is strange to glimpse their shadows in each hallway, to hear their voices in room once empty. They do not need her for meals; a few know how to cook and are careful to make enough for everyone. They do not want to know much about her; only once or twice do they ask a question that requires more than a one-word answer. Manners have not been forgotten, for they bow and open doors as well as any well-raised man would. No, Rue thinks. It is not within their behavior, but their presence itself that true warnings lie. Every free moment is spent at Siegfried’s side, entertaining him with robust tales of triumph in far-away lands, asking to be taught his legendary techniques of the sword and shield. Her prince is wary, yes, but he cannot help having missed the company, despite the circumstances. The men know this, and so does Rue. None of them are brave enough to be the reason he should leave her. They are merely ensuring that they will be one of the benefits. 

The priest is different. There are no more pretenses; he carries himself with all the poise and disdain of a perfect man in an imperfect world. Rue avoids him to the best of her ability, but there are moments here and there when she must pass him in empty hallway. He never speaks, only looks to her with eyes dark and drowning. Hurry past me with your head bowed like a girl knowing of sin should, they tell her. Beg for my forgiveness, they tell her. 

Rue will do neither. Each time he draws near, she stands tall, her toes pointed and her mouth a thin, thin curl. She does not pretend she isn’t afraid; she can bear being graceless, if only for a moment. Pointedly, she holds his gaze, and does not look away until he does so first. She does this the second time they meet, the third, the fourth. 

The fifth time, she stands in his way. 

“If you have something to say to me,” she says, the words like ice on her lips, all sense of politeness long bled clean from her, “then by all means, say it. There is no pretense where I’m concerned. There’s nothing to me other than what you see before you.” Her heart feels much too heavy, rattling through her chest like a caged bird. She means to stop, but a swell of emotion overtakes her, and the words tear their way out. “I am simply a girl who loves him!” 

The priest is still. His face is a shadow, his eyes as stark as stones in a riverbed. With a grave breath, he looks away after only a moment; he passes, as ever, without comment.

Rue does not think of this moment again until several hours have passed, until it is night and she is alone in the bedroom once again. The voices of the men carry, like ghosts in the air all around her, and so she stands at the window, needing a distraction. The moonlight is thick and bright, coloring the day-old snow a brilliant pearl color, casting such deep shadows across the dips in the field that if looks as if ink has been spilled through them. The forest’s edge trembles. 

She remembers then and thinks of Tutu’s lady, alone in that vast, cold forest. For almost a month now, Rue has not seen her. Her fingers strain across the windowsill, her knuckles white, the veins there thin and winding along the back of her hand like roads with no endings. She surely must be aware of the guests, must have some understanding of why they‘ve come. It wouldn’t take much at all for her to be made their champion, a lady of light and good to drown all her darkness in. There is motive; their encounter in the garden made that all that too clear. Even if she had not admitted it, Rue was never blind to the hunger in her eyes when she talked of the prince, for she saw the same look, however softened, in Ahiru’s eyes; she saw the same look each time she glimpsed herself in a mirror, hardened and tainted but still raw underneath all the glamour. So why does she not appear? 

_I am sure of it. You are simply a very brave girl_.

Rue sighs, and the soft sound bleeds into the breeze. She’d thought of those words when she had spoken to the priest; somehow, since that day, they’d woven into her, clung fast to her heart, her blood, her every bone. It’s true, isn’t it? It’s such a simple thing, but she must keep reminding herself of it. When all her trappings are torn away, when all things foreign and forced upon her have been stripped clean and bare, she is only a child of unfortunate circumstances, human in every way. 

She loves him, too. When everything in the entire world proved false, when her life was dark and cruel and lies, all lies, every word she spoke and every word spoken to her a _lie_ – that was always true. She never lied about loving him. Isn’t that enough? 

Without meaning to, she steadies a hand against a near wall. It is made of stone, and yet, at the weight of her touch, it buckles with a sigh. 

Ink stains every line in her palm, the color as dark as a wound.

  


*

  


A month passes, then another.

She finds little ways to measure the time, collecting the seconds and minutes and hours as though they are grains on a tilting scale: the changing of the men’s bodies, weaker, ever-thinner. The number of days it takes for her blood to grow restless, to burn and murmur sharp, senseless things against her bones once again. How many nights in a row dreams wake her. 

_Do you miss the ravens, my daughter? They were coarser then you, blacker then you, crueler then you. Now that they are gone, you are the only shadow left. Do you feel lonely in your gilded palace, in your aviary full of light? You always did love the darkest corners most of all._

Rue muffles her gasp in the sheets; she turns her face towards the wall. She listens to the shuddering of wind on glass, to the cries of animals distant and unknown, to Siegfried’s soft breathing, fitting just so between the bones in her back. It takes time, but she sleeps once more. If she dreams again, she does not remember it.

  


*

  


She is preparing some food for later one day when her prince slips into the kitchen, carrying a bundle of familiar pearl-white flowers, each petal fringed with half-melted ice. “The lady in white gave them to me,” he says when she arches an eyebrow at the sight.

“Oh,” Rue says. At once, she returns to her work. Her hands are sticky and sore, kept so busy that she is nearly able to ignore how her shoulders tense, how the lean muscles just beneath the back of her dress are at once taut. Of course, she thinks, and frowns when Siegfried briefly stands with his back to her. Of course. “How kind of her,” she adds a moment later with the shyest of disdain – only to blink as he turns and steadies her cheek with his hand, threading the stem of one flower through her curls with the other. It rests snug atop the crook of her ear, the petals tickling her skin. 

“She asked me to deliver them,” Siegfried says, pressing the rest of the bundle into her hands. “She said they were a gift for you.” 

Rue stares for several moments before realizing her lips aren’t moving. “Oh,” she says at last, the tone of the word very different the second time around. She clutches them to her chest, their wispy shapes fluttering with each breath she manages. Siegfried smiles and moves to find a vase. Her bread begins to burn, demanding attention, and so it went. 

(She does not attempt to understand it. She only sets the flowers aside and shakes her head. She only thinks, with thin lips and a strange, brief warmth in her throat: you silly child, you _silly_ child.)

  


*

  


There are good moments, still. The men are, above all else, simple, and easily distracted by hearty dinners or clumsy jokes thrown about a room. When this happens, Siegfried will squeeze her hand or Rue will touch a nail or two to the low of his shoulder, and carefully, they’ll slip out, escaping into the higher floors of the castle, hiding like children in rooms most unassuming. Often, they’ll talk; other times, they dance. Once or twice, they’ve only enjoyed the silence, a simple thing that is, nonetheless, now rarely afforded to them. One morning, though, feeling especially chagrined, Rue kisses him the moment they step into an empty hallway, brusque and brazen and unthinking. She moves away only when she can no longer ignore the need to breathe, wobbling on her heels. He steadies her. 

“The men would have surely found that far too scandalous to be done in their company,” she says, rather wryly. Siegfried laughs, his voice like the peal of a bell. He touches his hands to her neck; his fingers splay across her skin, wings to frame the breath in her throat. 

“I don’t doubt it,” is his response, heavy with warmth, and when he gently guides her back to him, Rue thinks, briefly but so, so vividly, that everything is certain to be all right after all.

  


*

  


When there is nothing else left to find comfort in, Rue dances.

Spring is coming. The men are relentless. She and Siegfried once performed together during these quiet afternoon hours, their movements clean and simple – but now, they have denied her even this, carting her prince off to rooms cold and windowless, where he will not be able to keep track of the passing of time. Rue carries her dark stares and sharp-edged words like weapons in hilts, easily brandished at the sight of them, but it cannot be ignored that she has no power, can find very little in this world of men and malice. Her lips pull thin at the thought. Still, she ties her toe-shoes with the utmost of care, the ribbons soft against her scratched fingertips.

She knows not how long she goes on, only that there will surely be blisters on her feet and blood in her shoes by the end of it. A naïve eye would think her sad and self-punishing, but briefly, in the breath after a turn or arabesque or grand jete, she finds room for a smile. Such cruelties are known to her. There are times when they are worth it. 

So she dances, and thinks of other times, far-away places. She remembers being young and wandering onto the Academy grounds, taking in every lax and strain of the students’ limbs as she watched through windows, mimicking such movements later when alone, hungry for the briefness of beauty. She remembers the silence that would fall over a restless room of first-years as she was called on to perform, the awe in their eyes nearly palpable, like sunlight on her skin. Without meaning to, she remembers a world that bled darkness all around her, the rattle of skeletons –

She stumbles. The drawing room spreads out around her, quiet, long-emptied of furniture. Light pours over her through two nearby open windows, thick and warm and tasting nothing of despair. 

Her feet tense then draw into the nearest position. She begins again. She has no need of the past; there are several more recent concerns to occupy herself with. 

The first: Not even three months in this land and the men are already foundering. The slow meshing of their colors reminds her of paint not yet dried; the lines of their limbs have grown dark, like sweeps of ink. Even the priest is nearly unable to support his own weight at this point, more caricature than flesh-and-blood. They do their best not to see it, but there is panic there, beneath all the stock pleasantness and joviality. Rue finds relief in this more than anything else, for it means they surely won’t linger any longer than they must.

(There are times where she wonders why she and Siegfried alone have remained unaffected. The thought is brief and always silenced quickly. If there is a reason for their immunity, Rue thinks it would be best to remain blind to it.)

The second: For almost three weeks now, the Raven’s blood has not spoken to her.

She pretends not to notice. She must, or –

Again, Rue stumbles. A dull pain thrums through both feet as they steady at awkward angles, the sun a burning shape at her back. Had this happened at the Academy, Mister Cat would have gently reprimanded her, speaking of how her thoughts needed not to stray, how her mind must be wholly captured by the dance, its every turn, every swell, every ebb and flow. 

Her hands curl, held loose at the low of her stomach. Perhaps it would be best to follow such advice. After all, if anything, she has spent the entirety of her life thinking far too much. Rue remembers what it was like when all of her circumstances spread out before her like little cogs and screws needing to be clicked beside one another in just the right order, every person subjected to scrutiny, every word she spoke painstakingly designed to deter or egg on. Even before she remembered the Raven, the consequences of every action still loomed large in her darkest spaces, whether it was a few sharp words to a brazen classmate or inviting a lesser student to partner with her to prove her own mastery, as she had once done with Ahiru. 

Well, she thinks, and steps into position once more. There is so much about her she has tried to change already. Why not this? 

Again, Rue dances. This time, she thinks not of distant places, tiresome concerns. Her limbs are dark, clean lines in the shadow of the sun; her chest heaves, her neck tense and gleaming with sweat. A recent memory finds her, but it is not so much a thought as it is a feeling, washing over her like a wave across a shore – the rhythm of their footsteps in that empty hallway, the way his fingers curled in her hair as he kissed her. The hope that had fluttered somewhere deep and unfathomable within her, sharp and vivid, so brief that it may not have been there at all. 

At last, she finishes without incident. With a deep sigh, she sinks to the floor, her limbs folding close to the stone as she completes a few simple stretches. Gingerly, she pulls her shoes’ ribbons loose, tied so tight that her ankles ache upon being freed from them. She wipes her wrist across her neck; she hides a smile, quick, behind her fingertips. 

It is a strange thing, hope. In a time that is starting to seem so far away, she remembers only a life of absolutes, of strings she could tug at and strain but never truly break, and yet – maybe now, everything will turn out all right. Maybe it – maybe she, she and nothing else – is enough. 

She is strong enough to allow herself, at least, the possibility.

  


*

  


It is like a thousand lifetimes, this interim of cold and dark – but finally, winter comes to the precipice, and her bones loosen at last. The frost melts, leaving branching veins of water along each windowpane. The snow is whittled away until the white expanse of the kingdom is replaced with brown and black and touches of green, stark in spots like dabs of paint. Rue has never been one to allow her brighter emotions to flourish on the surface, but the men have begun to glance out windows to their horses, restless in the stables, to the forest and all the lands beyond it, full and waiting, and the sight lightens her footsteps. Spring is near, she thinks and feels all but reborn. Spring is near.

It is on a day like this, warm and pleasant and thoroughly unassuming that she comes upon them: two of the men, half-draped in shadow, voices low and steady. Normally she would not find them worth any attention, but the sound of her prince’s name brims at the turn of her heels, followed by “a decision—” and “—quite the surprise.” A breath from the bend of the hall, she stills; she stands with her black flat to the stone. 

They speak. Rue listens. She does not catch every word, nor does she need to. What she hears is enough to cement her in place long after the men have tired of their conversation and moved towards the kitchen; it is enough for her heartbeat to quicken, skin burning cold just above it. 

Siegfried has asked them to stay.

For a moment, she does not understand. Her head is heavy; her body feels indefinite, as if at a great length from herself. Her hands make sure that she is still whole, flitting from her legs to her stomach to the bowed shape of her collarbone. To her shoulders, dipping below then up to meet her fingertips as she breathes. To her neck, the muscles there strained, so thick beneath her thin, thin skin. 

What does this mean? They have no further purpose in this half-dead land, no roles to fill besides the one they‘ve taken upon themselves. Why would he ask this of them? Unless – unless they are meant to rebuild, restore, revive. Unless they have homes to return to, trades that must be begun anew. Unless…

Rue realizes then, and it is like a piece of her has clicked out of place, stuttering against cogs once-fluid. She is of several minds in that moment. The child in her is overcome, her sadness an ocean on all sides and she already half-drowned. The woman is resigned, so disappointed in herself because isn’t this how it was always meant to end, of course it was, of course, how could you have dared to believe anything else? The raven – and this is what nearly brings her to tears, because it is soft-voiced, so much softer than before but still there, it is still there, and she had at last allowed herself to believe it had gone to sleep, it had _gone_ – is feverish with fury. 

She does not know how or why she begins to walk, only that the hall is suddenly blurring in the corners of her eyes. Her bones press up against her skin; both hands flutter needlessly at her side, and for a moment, they feel like claws, stark against her skirt. No, Rue thinks, and shakes them until every fingertip has gone half-numb. She does not know for sure whether it’s true, not yet, not yet. Maybe she’s misunderstood. Maybe it was a lie. She cannot smother everything violent within her, but she must try. She must bear it, despite the fear and the aching and _oh, my prince, my prince, how could you_ –

Short of breath, she reaches a bend in the hallway, only to stop a few steps beyond it. 

At the other end of the corridor she’s just entered is Siegfried, speaking with the priest. He is close and yet feels so distant to her, a colorless figure in a far-away place. Briefly, she is reminded of being small and graceless, hot tears pricking at her cheeks as he left her again and again, _stay and watch me, I practiced so hard_ , and oh, it is too much. She has to close her eyes. Her heart swells, like fire in her chest. She wants to go to him and spill it out at his feet, scream herself raw until she is hollowed of everything she has ever felt. It will not be possible. She will try, nonetheless.

One breath, then another. Her lashes tremble, tickling the faintest line of her cheeks. She opens her eyes again just as Siegfried turns towards an open window, the sunlight bright on his face as he smiles. 

A strange thing happens to her in that moment. It is not as easy as her emotions simply vanishing, of course – but still, their coarse edges are softened, whittled down to brief, easy bursts, fury come and fury gone. She has seen him smile before, but only rarely has it been with such warmth. He looked the same when he first saw the castle towers through the morning mist, when the priest, very much alive, appeared at the doors, when the men filled each empty, aching room with life again – because that’s right, isn’t it? He is not doing this to hurt her, but to save them, these people he loved and lost long before he even knew her name. She had realized that long before, hadn‘t she? She had planned to leave even, her thoughts only of the waiting carriage just outside the forests, of his face, half-feverish against her fingertips. That was before hope had bled into her, foreign and foundering but still bright, a star in all her darkness. Before – 

She stands straight. Her breath stings; her skin burns cold beneath her dress. Both hands curl close to her chest, as if to catch her heart should it try to tear its way out of her. Yes, Rue thinks. The scale is skewed too far. She has already tried to take so much of him for herself. Isn’t this only one more piece she will all but destroy in the name of love? One more precious thing that will crumple into ash the moment she takes it in her hands and tries to keep it safe. 

In that moment, she decides. 

Siegfried notices her then. At once, he moves past the priest, raising his hand in earnest. The sun catches in his eyes, coloring them a bright, burning amber, like a beacon calling her to port. 

“Rue,” he says. 

Rue runs.

Again, he calls her name, but the sound is little more than a sting at the bare of her ankles, turned so quick she nearly stumbles. She doesn’t know where she’s going, only that she’s already at the corner, already at the last step of the stairwell, already at the doors and away. Spring is still infant, unwieldy in its execution, seen in the way the field bleeds dark, messy color all around her. One of her shoes is dirtied, then the other. At the bend of a hill, she steps out of them, as easily as a ghost. 

This isn’t the end, she tells herself again and again, even as the words hurt, even as they settle in her stomach like stones. She could return to the Academy and continue her lessons. She could join a troupe, one just like the group that performed Sleeping Beauty for them, so small and warm and elegant. She could travel, see the dizzying, colorful places she once saw illustrations of in books. There was the faintest of curiosities there once, quickly smothered by her own violent heart, by the story’s ever-taut strings – but it was there, nonetheless, and the thought is a comfort. She is more than what this blood has made of her. She will overcome it. She must. She _must_.

And yet, the stretch of mud she stops before is wide and black and curled at the edges like wings, such endlessly enormous wings that she is sure with one step she would drown in them, die in them. Rue faces the wind. Her shoulders begin to shake. She covers her face with her hands. 

_My daughter, my daughter, my ugly daughter. Do you understand now? It did not matter that you escaped the despair within me. I had already devoured every last piece of you long before. I had already left you only your bones and a heart so coarse and raw that even a raven could not stomach it._

“Rue!”

She turns. Her breath burns in her throat; one hand catches across her neck, fingers bent like a rope pulled tight. Siegfried is running towards her. She means to call out – _my prince? Here I am_! – but can’t. She means to keep going, but her legs are cold, useless shapes beneath her thin skirt – or they are until suddenly, only a few feet from her, he trips. At once, she is there, having run through the mud, unthinking of her bare feet. She catches him against her just as his knees graze the grass.

“Thank you,” he says, his breath burning at her wrist. “Once again, you’ve saved me.” 

He smiles up at her then, as bright and kind-faced as a child and oh, it is too much. Her hands tremble. She presses one nail into his shoulder, then another. 

“How can you say that?” She did not mean to speak, but a voice tears its way out regardless, a voice that is not like hers at all, that is aching and monstrous and without grace, how could he ever love someone who speaks with such a voice, how _shameful_ – “I have not saved you. I’ve ruined it. All of this. Everything –”

Siegfried blinks, his smile unraveling into an uneasy shape. Gently, he takes her hands from his shoulders and steadies them. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?” 

She closes her eyes, unable to look him in the face. “If it were not for me, the story would not be suffering.” 

The sudden way he stills is enough to show her he understands. “No one knows that,” he says after a moment. “It has been too long –” 

“Even then!” Her voice reaches an ugly pitch, and at once, she bows her head. “Even then, I am still the one to blame! I am the one who kept you from regaining your heart. If it were not for me, you would have never have had to know any of this pain!” 

Siegfried’s breaths are shallow. He allows her hands to slip from his and cradles her face instead, his palms open and warm at her chin. “Rue,” he says, and it is only when a few of his fingertips touch her cheek that she realizes she’s crying. “Rue, listen to me –” 

“Stop,” she says, quiet but stern, and he does. She does not want to hear him say the words, nor does she need to. In one fluid motion, she reaches up and takes his wrists with both hands, holding them tight. “I know why you’ve asked them to stay,” she continues, her voice cracking on every odd word, “and I understand the reasons for it, I really do. My love may have been enough to save you from the Raven’s blood, but it is not enough to save all of this. It will never be enough.” 

The tears bleed into her curls and are gone. For one breath longer, she holds him to her. Then, with another, she steps out of reach, as simply as air. 

(Because she is stronger than this. Because she is more than her selfishness, her wanting, her fear. Because she is simply a very brave girl.) 

Silence. The wind is a steady thrum, sharp in her ears, cold at her back. In it, she can smell dew, the wetness of the dirt, flowers. They are in the garden, she realizes. Yes – there is the patch of daisies she picked stems for her wreath from, impossibly bright even on the darkest winter day. And there, the patch of land where, in the twilight of fall, they danced. Rue trembles but holds steady on her bare, blackened feet. With both hands, she gathers up her skirt and begins to turn away. 

“Rue,” Siegfried says again. She stops. His voice is warm. “I have asked the men to stay because I would like them to bear witness to our union. The priest has agreed to marry us.” 

At once, she draws in a breath, deep, like a person nearly drowned. 

“What?” She asks. 

He smiles and holds his hands out to her, fingers curled and palms open as if to say: come back, come back. “I would like it very much if you married me in a few days’ time. Is that all right?”

She cannot look at him – not yet. Her lips form a variety of clumsy shapes. The words are swollen in her throat, hot on her tongue. “I couldn’t,” she says at last. “I can’t –” 

“I know,” he says, softer than anything he’s said before, and when she does not come to him, he comes to her, brings her in, envelops her. She fists her hands in his shirt. His heartbeat echoes against her knuckles, as steady as the chime of a bell.

“I’ve finally told them everything,” he says, his voice warm in her hair. “What has happened outside the story, the suffering we’ve both weathered – and what’s become of my blood.”

Her breath hitches. “You mean –”

“Yes. They understand now, at last. Even if I was to do as they say, there is no guarantee the story could be saved. I am not the same as I once was. I cannot fit back into the role so easily. The Raven’s blood has made sure of that.” 

With a harsh breath, she presses her forehead to his shoulder if only so that he will not see her cry again. Rue remembers: the feeling of love, as pretty as a little jewel in her hand. So warm, such a strong, steady pulse. How she clenched it between her fingernails and thought of breaking it: easy, like glass. How she dropped it into her father’s blood and simply watched as its glimmer ebbed away. With a gasp, she clings to him all the more fiercely, the front of his shirt quickly dampened. In the end, her leaving would mean nothing. She cannot save him in that way, for she has already ruined him in this way, and beyond that, she imagines a world of deeper, slyer scars, simply waiting for the ones before them to be overcome. Yes, Rue thinks. She can do nothing. She doomed him the moment she chose to love him at all. 

“Rue,” he says, with more gentleness than she could ever deserve. His arms cross at the crest of her shoulders, holding her as she shakes. “Rue, please don’t cry. Look at me. Please –” 

“I am so sorry,” she chokes out. She feels one of his hands leave her shoulder and fold just so beneath her bowed head. His thumb catches at the curve of her chin, tilting it up. She allows him to lead her, but still, she doesn’t open her eyes, her long lashes thick with tears. “I can’t be forgiven for this. I _can’t_.” 

“Rue,” he says again. “Look at me.” 

Unthinking, she does. Her vision blurs, colors bleeding into one another, but at last, there he is. His eyes are soft. His smile, wholly genuine.

“It’s too late for that,” he says. “It’s too late. I already have.”

With anyone else’s voice, such words would sound hollow, pitying – but the warmth in the way he’s looking at her now is unwavering, and for not the first time, she thinks: how could she have ever believed the prince would be better off without his heart?

“There’s still a chance,” she hears herself say, the words half- raw at their edges. “If you tried –”

But Siegfried shakes his head. “Those who were lost may return, yes, but with the way I am now, they could come back half-formed or corrupted or – or not even human at all. I couldn’t risk that.” 

She tells herself to breathe, in then out, in then out, the rhythm of it so sudden and heavy in her chest that she feels she may faint. His hands, held at her shoulders, tighten, as though he is the one who now needs to be steadied by her.

“Believe me when I tell you this. If there is nothing else I can do to save my kingdom – well, then I will mourn its loss until the end of my days. I can only pray that those who left have found some measure of contentment wherever they are now. As for those who stayed behind, I will cry for them,” he says, his voice suddenly thick, and she knows he already has, many times, “and carry them with me always. It will not be easy, I am sure, but it is a loss I can bear.” He winds his fingers against her sleeve gently, so gently. “I could not bear to lose you again.” 

Rue no longer knows if she is smiling or crying – maybe both. Her heart is a violent, trembling thing, the weight of it a sharp pain in her chest. She wants him to stop. She wants him to never stop.

Siegfried smiles into her hair; he leans in so close that the warmth of each word brushes her lips. “Nothing will change the fact that I am in love with you, Rue,” he says. “I’m only more aware of it with every day that passes. No matter where we may go, what hardships we have to weather – I want to be at your side. I can only hope you feel the same.” 

He takes one of her hands in his own and holds it tight, his skin dry and warm as he threads his fingers between hers. He closes his eyes, waiting. Over his shoulder, Rue sees the castle, dark against a clean sky. She thinks of the men, of their black eyes, of the smell of ink and the way it stuck to her, wet in the lines of her palms – but somewhere, a bird is chirping, its melody a promise of spring. Siegfried squeezes her hand, and that is a promise too, written across every finger, the strain of her knuckles. Rue breathes in. She breathes. 

“Yes,” she says at last, hoarse, and he looks up at her again. “That will be all right.” 

Siegfried blinks. “What will?” 

She cannot hold back a smile, her eyes burning again with the threat of tears, though this time for an entirely different reason. “It will be all right if we get married. Did you ask me that a moment ago, or was it my imagination?”

His mirroring of her smile is an answer in itself. Unable to contain herself, she erases the step between them, embracing him so fervently that he stumbles backwards, unprepared, the two of them falling back into a heap among the ice and grass. 

“Are you all right?” Siegfried asks at once, alarmed, surely thinking she’s crying, thinking she’s been hurt – only to see her laughing into her cupped hands. Rue cannot remember ever having laughed before without the weight of malice, of pity, of pain and disbelief. It feels wonderful. It feels like life. 

“I’m fine,” she says. With one hand, she reaches out to steady herself against the ground. Her fingertips brush a strange shape, half-hidden by the remains of a bush; she pulls the object free, wondering, and – and, oh, it’s a wreath. It’s the wreath she wove at the beginning of the season, the flowers as fresh and bright as the day she plucked them from their stems. How is that possible? 

“What is that?” Siegfried has pulled himself upright by then as well. Rue gently touches the crown-shape, the woven green stems, each soft petal. With a smile, she reaches up and places it on Siegfried’s head. 

“Do you like it, my prince?” She asks. 

He laughs then too. “Yes, very much,” he says, and it is one last severance, quick and clean, from what has come before. It is a beginning.


	4. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some stories cannot ever be finished; some changes take patience, care, and time. Rue begins to heal.

  


_Spring_  
(the time has come / shake off all your sins / let us be brave / let us be brave)

  


They will be married the day after tomorrow.

Rue threads those words into her hair with each sweep of her brush, presses them to the creases in her skirt, wears them snug at her collarbone like little jewels. Her reflection glimmers at the edge of the mirror as she turns, ready for the day. Her skin has a warm color to it. Her eyes look darker, almost brown at the edges (and this makes her wonder for the briefest moment: were they brown in that sliver of unknowable time before she was taken? Was there once something in her face, something fractured and distorted but never entirely erased that perhaps was a shadow of a mother’s features, a father’s?) It may be just a trick of the light, but she shares a smile with her reflection nonetheless, small and graceless, simple in a way that’s still unfamiliar to her.

The men, meanwhile, have shed their warm natures as though they were pieces of clothing. Now, they spend the hours cloistered in hallways with the fewest windows, their murmurs burning in the castle’s dour air, echoing like ghosts in the spaces they leave once they hear her approaching. The priest passes her in hallways no longer, preferring to stay locked in the room appointed as his – though whether this is because of his displeasure or because he can barely support his own weight at this point, as thin and brittle as dried parchment, Rue is not sure. A part of her wants to force her way into their clusters and demand to hear what they have to say; a part of her wants to laugh in their faces, sharp-edged and with abandon. Instead, she prepares tea, a blend that has soothed her on several sleepless nights, and carries the kettle and cups all over the castle until each man has been warmed to the bone, not even bothering to look at them when they turn to her with surprised eyes. It takes strength and something else in her, something rawer than courage, but whatever small kindnesses she can muster will serve as her shields now. She will not draw lines in the sand. Not anymore.

It is late in the day when a knock on glass startles her as she stands in the kitchen. Flour scatters from her fingertips into the air; she stands straight and turns to the window at the far wall. Tutu’s lady stares back at her, her fingers splayed open in a clumsy wave. Dirt is smeared across her palms, spotted along her cheeks like dark freckles.

“Do you have a moment?” She asks, sniffling. “There is something I would like to show you.”

Rue does not know how to hold herself in the doorway, if she should sharpen her eyes and shoulders or turn her wrists outward, as if to invite her into an embrace. She wonders if she has heard talk of the wedding, how much, how little.

“I’m in the middle of something,” she says, her lips thin against her teeth. “It requires my attention.”

The girl’s eyes are, as ever, unwaveringly bright. “Please,” she says.

Rue arches an eyebrow, but still, she goes with her across the expanse of the field, past the forest’s edge, down a thin, winding path long-reclaimed by dead vines and clusters of growing flowers. Three times, she nearly trips over branches and stones, little, ugly pinpricks left in her skirt. All the while, Tutu’s lady moves like water in front of her, a bright shape of white amidst all the muddled color of the trees. She is so thin, so slight; with every swell of wind, Rue fears she will scatter like unbound sheets of paper. Dark, wet spots have colored the dirt where she walked, and Rue cannot tell if they are blood or something else entirely.

“Can’t you tell me what this is about?” She calls after her, clutching at her cheek where a thorn tore a thin scrape. Again, she nearly stumbles. “They’ll be wondering if I’m gone too long –”

“Just a little further,” comes the answer, distant and lilting. “It’s a surprise!”

At last, a clearing. Sunlight spills between thick branches, touching the earth around them in wiry lines. At the center, a wide hole has been dug by hand. Tutu’s lady bends over it deeply as if in prayer; she takes up a worn wooden box hidden within and holds it to her chest. The sight of her makes Rue feel quiet suddenly. In a single fluid movement, she drops to her knees on a clean stretch of ground, her skirt fanning out around her. Tutu’s lady follows.

“Before the Raven came,” she begins, her voice little more than a whisper, “my sisters and I wished to make for our princess a gift, for she had given us so much over the years. She loved the prince dearly, we knew this – though she did not speak of it to us.” She bows her head. Her eyelashes flutter, dark against her pale skin. “Even if she could never truly be with him, we still did not want her dreams to die. We thought it would surely make her happy, and if the need ever _arose_ , she would have it and think of us fondly forevermore. We did not know…”

Her lips pull thin. With dirtied fingers, she slides the cover free, letting it fall just past her toes. She holds it out for her to see, and Rue catches her breath.

A wedding dress.

“We thought it would make her happy,” she says again, and the words scrape in her throat like metal on stone.

Rue cannot help herself. At once, she reaches out, touching the soft fabric, the long veil spooled above it, the intricate shapes of beading, all so startlingly white. At its back are wings, large and elegant, made of such gentle satin that wrinkles bloom there from the weight of her touch.

“I would like you to have it,” Tutu’s lady whispers, as though it is a secret to be kept from the trees, the wind. She tilts the box until the dress seeps out into Rue’s open lap, smiles behind her fingertips like a shy child would. “You have need of it, after all.”

Rue does not know what to say at first, the gown a sudden weight upon her. In that space of time from her first disdainful impression of Tutu as a child that she took from that single illustration and being forced to watch as she paraded around Kinkan, suddenly, impossibly real, it was true that she had nursed a stinging jealousy of her – or rather, of Ahiru clothed in her skin. Everything about her was effortless, and perhaps that was what had hurt most of all; the prince saw her and bore more light in his eyes than ever before, as though it were really that easy, as though it were _simple_ , everything Rue would have given for him to look at her only once in that way rendered wholly worthless. There were nights where she dreamt of herself clothed in those same white feathers, so bright they hurt her eyes, the pieces of his heart as hot as burning coals when she tried to gather them in her hands. She dreamt of speaking her love aloud and dissolving into light then warmth then nothing at all, and woke in her bed frightened, no longer sure if she were real at all, if she’d become something intangible, a chill in the air, a feeling. Towards the end, nearly consumed by all her pain and fear, she’d even begun to believe it would be a blessing to suffer such a fate, that it was the role she had truly been intended for all along in this cruelty of a story. She was not a princess, had never been one at all, she was only a ruined human girl with black blood and limbs full of aching and a stone for a heart that only believed it could beat, and if the only thing she had left to her in the world was her voice, then so be it. She would be the one to disappear because she loved him. She would be the one to say –

Rue breathes in, then out. Her fingernails trace delicate shapes down the length of the dress, from the bodice to the fringe. She wonders if Tutu ever wore it when she thought herself alone at the quietest edges of the forest, if she danced or sang or simply stood tall and ignored the steadfast aching of her heart, a feeling both different and similar to a child’s whose lips were wet with the Raven’s blood, who begged for her prince to stay only a moment longer. To wear it would be like wearing another person’s skin, would be like pretending with a glamour, a purity that did not belong to her, would never belong to her. Rue does not want to pretend anymore. She remembers herself near the end, self-hating and hollowed, wanting more than anything else to escape herself – and yet, it is she alone, severed from all the lies and trappings, who was strong enough to speak. They are still strange, these words warm on her tongue, stitching themselves so painstakingly into the lining of her heart: she is enough. She is enough.

“No,” she says to Tutu’s lady, and the word pierces the heavy silence that’s settled around them. “Thank you, but no. It would be wrong.” With careful hands, she folds the dress back across the length of the open box. “I do not need it.”

The girl simply nods, her smile wrinkling at the edges. She wipes her hands on her knees then takes up the dress herself, hugging it to her chest as one would a person. Her fingertips twitch as they brush the edges of the wings.

“It is hard, sometimes,” she says, “to let go of dreams.”

Rue nods in turn, and knows she does not mean her own.

Silence. The wind ribbons through the foliage, warm against the lines of her back, and she turns towards it without thought, looking up at the trees trembling above her, still blackened but with color already budding across each branch. The castle’s highest towers bleed in just overhead, casting shadows. Rue rubs one wrist, her nails caught just above her pulse. There are words clustered in her throat, so simple but still held back by the slightest of hesitation. She wills it away, for she is no longer too proud to ask this of such a simple, tender-hearted girl. She is not too proud to try and build a bridge between them.

“If you’d like,” she starts, still facing away, and surprises even herself with how easily it comes, “you could return to the castle with me.”

No answer. Rue purses her lips then brushes away the curls sticking to her neck, sweat already beading there in such fair heat. She clears her throat.

“Surely you would prefer some company to staying here alone. It is still cold on some nights, after all. You could help me with my preparations, as meager as they are.” Rue hates the sound of her own voice. The words sound nothing at all like she meant them to, so uncertain, so soft. The girl stays silent, and oh, she must think her a fool. She is no good at this. Friendship is still an utterly foreign thing to her, difficult to articulate, impossible to quantify. Not once had she been able to make a friend while at the Academy, she thinks – only to realize a moment later that that isn’t entirely true.

_Besides, we’ve walked together and talked all this time, so we’re already friends now!_

A familiar rawness rushes to her chest, so suddenly she is ignited by it, desperate for this question to be answered no matter what the outcome is, desperate for something (a warm face, an outstretched hand, the sound of her name ringing through an empty room, happy and unthinking, like a prayer) that she once had a world away from here, that she was too blind to realize was hers until it was already half-gone. With a harsh breath, she turns to face the girl again. “If you don’t…”

The rest is struck dead in her throat. The white dress is fluttering helplessly in the breeze, caught between the box’s edge and the ground. Tutu’s lady lies on her stomach, her face pressed flat to the grass. She is still.

Rue does not remember the sound that leaves her mouth, nor how her body moves at the sight. It is like looking at photographs – one minute she is still, the next she is crouched over the girl, raising her up by the shoulders, touching a careful hand to the swell of her cheek. Her closed eyes tremble beneath her fingertips. The colors of her skin and dress stick beneath Rue’s touch, loathe to move as fluidly as they should; they leave bright-colored smears in the soil as she shifts her once, then again. Her weight is nothing at all, like bed sheets, like – like _paper_ , she thinks, and realizes the truth in that moment. Tutu’s lady has lived within the story for several months now, far longer than the men. She will soon…

Rue swallows the words like water; she steels herself. She is still breathing, still whole. It isn’t too late.

“You have to leave,” she says, and settles the girl’s elbows in her lap. “Another story. I’ll take you there.”

Tutu’s lady turns away from her touch, though. Her eyes do not open.

“No,” she says.

“Please.” Rue’s voice cracks, an ugly sound. She does not know where the boundary between the tales lies or how long it would take to find on foot, but still, she reaches for the woman’s arm, meaning to sling it around her neck and carry her, drag her if she must. “Do you not know what will happen if you stay? Let me help you!”

“ _No_ ,” the woman cries out, and it is the harshest thing Rue has ever heard her say. She twists in the ocean of her skirt, as if drowning. “Don’t you see? My sisters are here. My princess. Her bones are…”

She begins to cry. The tears trace lines down her face, catch and glisten against Rue’s nails. It strikes her in that moment that she doesn’t even know the girl’s name, that she has never spoken her own to her. The thought hurts more than she would have imagined.

“I remember,” she says, and when she opens her eyes again at last, they are bright and wild, like stars in daylight. “I saw it. I saw her across the lake. I called for her, but she would not come to me. She was smiling, and I heard her voice, heard her speak to him and I thought, ah, how wonderful. I didn’t know. I didn’t, I swear I didn’t, and then she was the sun, and then a star, and then a flame, and then, and then—”

Rue feels her pulse, fast and swollen in her throat. Her legs will not tense. Her arms will not rise. She can only hold the woman soft against her, like one would hold a frightened child. She does not know what to say, and it is silly, it is _silly_ , this tightness in her chest, these stinging tears just behind the color of her eyes. She has only known this girl briefly, has only spoken with her twice before, and yet –

“I hope you will be happy,” the girl says, and touches the fingers on one hand to Rue’s hair, dark on her shoulder. “Please be happy, princess.”

She breathes in. “Rue,” is all she can say in response, so softly that it’s barely heard at all. “My name is Rue.”

Tutu’s lady smiles.

“How lovely,” she says, and Rue closes her eyes to the sound as though it is rain, cool on her face.

  
  


*

  


Her prince, frantic, finds her there not much later, sitting alone in the clearing. Her skirt is pressed to her knees; her hands are stained with color thick like blood and dark like ink. She holds her gaze to the pieces of frayed parchment that sweep the dust at her feet, shuddering helplessly in the breeze before allowing themselves to be carried deep, deep, deeper into the forest and away.

  
  


*

  


The dress, they bury just outside the garden.

It is a strange request, but one the men do not question. They roll up their sleeves and clutch at rusted shovels and tear away at the earth until she is satisfied with their efforts. She holds it tight across the bridge of her arms as she waits, thin and dirtied and without a body to fill it. Siegfried hides his sadness in every brief shadow, in the corners of his bright eyes like rain that lingers at a border but does not cross. This is a loss that belongs more to her than to him. He knows this, holding her when she wavers, squeezing her hand before letting it go as she lays the dress upon the soil, her chest cold, her throat hot.

The soil is tucked around its edges like a blanket, so thoroughly there are few signs it’s even there at all. Siegfried’s hand brushes hers again. His touch is soft and careful, his fingers ghosting over her pulse, swollen in her wrist, a simple reminder that he’s there should she need him. “It’s finished,” a voice vaguely comments from somewhere behind her, deep within the throng of men, and that is what makes her finally move again, struck by a thought.

“No,” she says. With a small, grim smile, she picks up two of the shovels. One, she holds out for Siegfried to take. “Not nearly.”

It only takes him a moment to understand. At once, her prince calls to the men, who turn to him like flowers turn to the sun. Before long, they form a procession that curls in and out of the castle doors, everyone’s arms filled with embroidered gowns, children’s bonnets, skirts and tunics of thread both cheap and exquisite, their insides stiff with the memory of bodies long gone. All are laid to rest, in graves that soon spread far across the field, clean and even, emptied then filled with a subdued speed. The process is exhausting, and never mind if their limbs are not all that is aching. By the end, everyone’s knees and hands are dark with mud. On a nearby hill, the priest has appeared, assisted by two men who stand at each of his arms.

“Thank you,” Siegfried says once it is finished, an earnest murmur that is meant for no one in particular, that is given as fully to the newly settled ground and what has been stitched deep within it as it is to the men breathing heavily at his back. His voice is small and wounded but with a touch of something put to rest at last. Rue takes his hand and gently turns him into her embrace, ready now to be his strength as he was hers.

“It is not enough,” he sighs against her neck, “but it is something.”

She closes her eyes. “Yes,” she says, warm. “It is something.”

The priest murmurs a few prayers, quickly lost to the wind.

  
  


*

  


They eat their dinner in the garden, calmed though still pensive, and when a robin jumps from Siegfried’s knee to eat from her open palm, Rue thinks her heart may burst.

  
  


*

  


In the end, it’s simple.

There is little use for the old traditions and decorum; the time for such things has passed, alongside the lives of those who would have enforced them. They dress in opposite corners of the same room, unfolding the royal garments they arrived in, touching them with warm, careful hands, greeting them like old friends. Rue adjusts her prince’s crown until sits evenly on his head; Siegfried holds her hair for her as she ties ribbons in her curls, silver and gold and even some colored a dark, dark red. Once finished, they walk together, hand in hand, through the empty hallways, across the green and even land, quieted by rainfall. The men have organized themselves into rows in the field near the pond, their hats held against their thighs. The priest stands as tall as he can manage in his state, waiting until they’ve reached them before he begins.

Rue’s heart is a violent, shuddering thing in her chest, Siegfried’s hand like cool water that settles and resettles over the lines in her palm. She says what is asked of her and hardly hears any of it. Fear grips her at her harshest edges, as familiar as an old skin. Despite everything they’ve been through, she finds herself still cautious, still half-expecting to come to any moment and discover it was all nothing but a feeble, dying dream, her true body still helplessly captivated by one last dance in the Depths of Despair. She will not fully believe any of this, not until it is finished, and at that uncertain thought, the Raven’s blood murmurs somewhere deep within her, still burning and still cruel – but faint, it’s faint now, as faint as a half-forgotten dream, as far away as her memories are growing from her, like trinkets stored in chests closed but left unlocked, coming to her in only colors and words, black feathers and pearl-colored tutus and endless gray landscapes, _my beloved, pitiful daughter_ and _say that you love me_ and _not a raven a person my name is my name is my name is_ –

“Rue?”

She comes back to herself once again; it is not as long of a trip this time. Siegfried is waiting, his eyes bright, his lips parted in innocent anticipation. Her smile, in turn, is effortless, and she cannot even bring herself to care that it is surely as graceless and lopsided as a child’s. She has had quite enough of waiting. At once, she pulls him in.

(It would be wrong, she now understands, to forget what came before, to force it down and smooth over it like a false grave. These are things she must carry; these are things that will remain carved into her, scars on her skin. But that does not mean she cannot build upon them, around them, within them and out, with seeds that she plants in the husks they have left, with simplicities that must be learned slowly and carefully, through practice and error. Happiness will have to be one of them. There is time. There is time.)

His kiss is sweet and lingering, and in it, she feels his love for her a thousand times over, casting echoes across every one of her bones, scattering light in places still dark. Rue takes it in, and responds in kind. The men dutifully applaud, and at last, they are married.

  
  


*

  


Afterwards, they gather their bags and their horses, and with heartfelt farewells to their prince and his princess, take their leave into the forest, their shadows long across the land in the heavy light of sunset. For a time, they will wander and they will grieve, but soon enough, other stories will call to them as they did to those who came before, ones needful of their characters, of simple, unnamed men and knowing priests. They will find themselves stitched into new lands and kingdoms, new tales that need their support to thrive, and they will learn to forget.

“Well,” Siegfried says once they’ve vanished, his voice heavy with a relief only barely contained until now, “that went much better than I’d hoped.”

Rue smiles, but says nothing. Behind them, their castle groans helplessly, like a great animal that has fought a brutal, decisive battle, only to lose it in the end.

  
  


*

  


What Siegfried does not know:

They had come for him the night before the wedding, the priest and his men. Rue had known it would happen the moment she smelled the tea they’d offered her after dinner, the scent reminding her faintly of medicine and smoke, its surface cloudy; she had known it the moment she saw that Siegfried had been led to the other side of the room, the men rooted like trees to the space between them until he’d drained his cup, having not noticed a thing. In turn, she’d discreetly spilled hers into the nearest half-empty bowl of soup and thanked them. She had expected some final desperate gesture, but never something so underhanded, so cruel. It did not matter. She was prepared, regardless.

Sure enough, that night her prince would not wake no matter how hard she shook him, his breathing slow and deep. There was no time to hide him; already, she heard footsteps, heavy on the floors below their bedroom. Instead, she closed her eyes and laid still, so still she could be dead, even as she heard the door open and heavy breathing fill the room, even as Siegfried’s weight was gently lifted from the bed and away from her, despite how she wanted to reach after him in that fearful moment. She waited. She didn’t move until they’d left the room and started down the stairs again. Her eyelashes fluttered, heavy on her cheeks. Her heart stuttered in her chest, a quick, painful beat. She counted to ten, and then followed them.

Thankfully, the men had not been in any sort of hurry, thinking her safely out of the way. Some brandished lit torches, while others carried swords and daggers in hilts. They moved loudly through the hallways, one of them carrying Siegfried over his shoulder, the rest arguing over where they should go, what they should tell their prince once he awoke, what would become of her here, alone in this dying land. Their fleeting concern was touching, she’d thought dryly, her lips pulled thin as she hurried down an adjoining path, her bare feet light enough on the cobblestone that she knew she would not be heard. At the corner, she paused. Their lights bobbed wildly in the next corridor, approaching fast.

“Don’t tell me you planned to leave without a proper goodbye.”

She nearly laughed at the way they jumped. At once, the light was thrust towards her, so near that all of her was made clear at once, her bare feet, her dark hair wild with curls, her bright-edged gaze. In turn, they seemed endless, a shaking mass of limbs and faces half-covered with shadow that easily arched above her. For a moment, she felt very small. But then that moment passed.

“You must have known this is how it would end,” the one nearest to her said, his face young, his eyes so, so old. “The prince will not listen to reason, he _refuses_ , but it is best for him to come with us. Do not be selfish. This is not what was meant to happen.”

Rue could not hold back her chagrin. “Yes, because what you’re doing is _so_ much better,” she said, sharp and even. “I commend you on your wisdom. Spiriting him away in the middle of the night to God-knows-where is clearly the wisest choice.” She sighed, pressing her fingertips to her forehead, then began again. “He trusts you. He sees you all as good, honest men. What will he think when he finds you have betrayed him? Do you really believe he will not come back for me?”

“We are willing to take that risk,” another answered.

The flames flickered and popped, painting the stone a dull gold. Near the wall, she saw the man who carried Siegfried standing behind two others, his hair brightening as the light caught it once, then again. Unthinking, she started towards him – but the men brandished their swords and daggers, and she pulled back.

“Not another step,” the one nearest to her warned. Still, his voice shook, a near-imperceptible crack amidst all the bravado. She looked from him to each of the others in quick succession, taking in their bared teeth, their wide eyes, the broad, clumsy way they clutched at their weapons. At once, she understood.

“You’re afraid of me.” She had meant to laugh, but the sound caught, wet and strangled in the low of her throat, and she did not try again. “Are you waiting to see if I’ll turn into a raven? Is that it? Do you want to see some sort of dark magic?” Her voice had risen nearly to a yell; it echoed back at her, hoarse and vicious, cracks at the edges of every word. She would not be bothered by it. They were not worth any decorum, any control. She would give them what they thought they wanted. She would drown them in her anger if she damn well pleased.

She touched one hand to her chest, her nails fluttering across the sharp bow of her collarbone, her palm flat above her heartbeat. The other, she held out. “I will show you, then.”

She had not called on Kraehe’s powers in months, had not worn the feathered tutu and dark, silk toe-shoes since she had discovered that they had only been false glamour, since she had cut them open like film and slid through, small and raw. She didn’t even know if it was possible any longer – but still, she curled her hand, flicked her fingers as though trying to create sparks. Sure enough, with the softest of hisses, a single black feather materialized in one of her hands. The men recoiled with audible gasps.

“We knew it,” one near the back shouted. “We knew it! You are—”

“No,” Rue answered calmly, cutting him off. “I am not.”

She allowed the feather to slip from her grip, not even looking as it settled on the stone. The men watched instead, and were silent. She breathed in.

“Do you want to know the truth about me? You’ve all proven how much you value _honesty_ , after all,” she continued. “The Raven came to me when I was very young. Or rather, I was brought to him. He told me lies, and I believed every last one of them. I was only a child, and all alone. What other choice did I have but to love him?” A private corner of her heart stirred with pain, faint and half-forgotten, _father yes father anything father_. She swallowed. “I drank of his blood– so yes, there is a part of him that will be with me forever. But I have never been anything other than human.” She held each man’s gaze for a long, stern moment. “It is true that I have done horrible things. What’s happened to me does not excuse that. But you must see that I am just as much his victim as you all are.”

Silence. The group exchanged glances, quick, steady looks that she could not interpret. She brushed her hair back from her face; beneath her touch, the muscles in her neck trembled, heavy with words she still wanted to say, to cast down upon their heads as if they were a violent rain. She would wait.

Then, Siegfried screamed.

The man holding him cried out, nearly falling against the wall, his limbs wild and senseless shapes in the faint light. The others came to his aid at once; Rue watched, shocked into a brief stillness by the sudden rush of noise and movement. At a loss, they laid her prince upon the cobblestone and formed a hasty circle, watching as he shook, his eyes still closed, his brow already slick with sweat. Some tried to touch him, but it only made his cries grow louder, thicker with pain.

“What is happening to him?”

“Don’t let him hurt himself!”

“He is sick. He is possessed—”

“Oh, _move_ ,” she said with a sigh, already recovered. She brushed past the two men blocking her view, who stumbled back at the weight of her touch at once, too shocked to protest. In one fluid motion, her knees folded to the stone. Her gown fluttered at the edges as it settled in a ring around her.

“What is happening to him?” The same man asked again, quieter. None of them were moving any longer, instead frozen shoulder-to-shoulder, resigned to spectators.

“He suffers from nightmares.” She didn’t even bother to look at the man as she said it, instead lifting Siegfried’s head and resting it against her bent legs with the utmost of gentleness. “His demons prefer to come to him when he sleeps, I’ve learned. Step back.”

They did, their torches fluttering.

“Ah,” her prince cried. He raked his fingernails across the stone again and again, as though he was trying to grab hold of something, as though he was trying to keep himself from being dragged into some unfathomable darkness. “It burns! Inside of me, it’s – no, no! It _hurts_ —”

“Shh,” she whispered. With both hands, she touched his face; she curled over him, her hair spilling around them both like a curtain pulled close. Her lips stilled the trembling of his own then parted, and she spoke into his mouth, pouring words in as if they were water, as if they were light. “It’s all right. Do you hear me? Please, my prince. I love you. I love you. I will say it as many times as you need. Now come back to me again. Come back.”

It took a moment, but at last, he calmed. With a sigh, he turned his face into the curl of her hand, settling into her touch; he whispered something unintelligible against the lines in her palm. In turn, she kissed the corner of his mouth, her body heavy with relief.

“What will he do?”

She looked up. The men stood a few feet away, so still, their weapons catching the light in sharp bursts of silver and bronze – but their faces had colored with something softer than fear, and in turn, Rue’s anger eased at the edges.

“What will he do when this place is gone?” The same man asked again, his voice cracking. “He is not well-versed in the ways of the world. How will he survive without his kingdom?”

“He is stronger than you think,” was her answer. Her hand settled in his hair; her long nails brushed away the beads of sweat left at his forehead. Siegfried breathed easily. “Besides, I more than make up for his weaknesses.” Her smile was a shy thing, half-hidden in the darkness. “As he does mine.”

“But would you fight for him like we would?” Another yelled from the back of the group. “Are you willing to die for him?”

“I have already done so once,” she shot back, even though her chest hurt with it, even though she knew they would not understand how that could be so. She remembered: the endless darkness of a mouth as it closed around her, shuddering skeletons dancing en pointe. She could not explain what it had felt like to them. She could not convey the pain with real words. “What makes you think I would not do it again?”

Silence. Again, the men looked to one another, the lines of their jaws and throats severe in the faint light, the meaning of it lost to the shadows. One cleared their throat, a brusque, unsettling sound. Rue swallowed; her knees throbbed, ground into the cool stone. With a glint of sudden color, they raised their weapons up to the length of their chests and began towards her.

“Stop,” she said, and stood at once, moving in front of Siegfried. “ _Stop_ ,” she said again when they did not, the word burning her tongue. “You may be afraid of me, but I am _not_ afraid of you!”

They stopped.

“Yes,” the man nearest to her said, almost kind, and closed his eyes. “We knew that from the start.”

A great clatter echoed through the hallway as they threw their swords and daggers on the stone before her. Rue stared down at the pile, inches from her bare feet, near enough to grab one by the hilt should she see fit. She looked up again – but they were not there to meet her eyes with their own any longer. They’d all crouched to one knee, the men in the front all the way to the half-clear faces in the back, a sea of dark heads and light-edged outlines of backs and shoulders all she could see. For a moment, she did not understand. It was only when the man closest extended his arm to her in a manner of unbelievable grace that the meaning struck fast. They were bowing to her.

“We are sorry,” he said, his words half-muffled against his knee. “We cannot help but worry for him. He is our life. This – this was wrong, though. Forgive us.”

Rue could not speak. One by one, they slowly raised their heads to look at her again, and in their wet eyes, she saw herself reflected a hundred times over. Her heart felt fit to burst; she settled a stricken hand over her chest to cover it. She should have known better than to think of what they felt as anger instead of sadness, as cruelty instead of a terrible, terrible fear that turned one into something harsh and dangerous. She, of all people, should have known better.

“We were wrong to judge you as we did,” another man spoke, his face unbearably young for all the age it bore. Please forgive us, princess.”

“All right,” she’d said, not unkindly, and held out both her hands to him. He took them and stood, as did the rest of the men. Most of them would not be able to see the soft look she wore in such faint light, but it did not matter; she looked to each hollowed face regardless and gave it to them, a kindness carefully afforded. “Enough of that.”

They understood one another, then. Some of them approached Siegfried, still and silent on the floor, but Rue shook her head, worried he may wake in the midst of being moved, worried that it might trigger another night terror. Instead, they gathered their relinquished weapons and left, heading back to their rooms high in the castle walls, their footsteps quieting until they were little more than distant echoes all around her. It was only when the last one had left, pressing his torch into her hands, that she’d noticed there was still another in the hallway. The priest was steadied against the far wall, his dark eyes briefly turned bright when the flame caught his outline once, then again. With great effort, he started towards her, his bones cracking inside his thin, thin skin, his face folding into itself as the shadows caught it, like paper torn and crumpled. Rue did not move. When he at last stood in front of her, he did not smile nor frown. He only took her hand, so whole and heavy against his own.

“Since the beginning, I thought you were extraordinary,” he said. His voice was unfamiliar; he had not spoken in so long that she’d forgotten the sound of it. He patted her palm with his fingers. “I still think that – but in a different way now, it seems.”

He left her too, then. She nearly started after him, seeing how he was struggling to take even simple steps forward, only for one of the men to appear from the darkness, having waited until he’d said what he meant to. She watched them until they’d vanished around the corner then sunk to her knees, all but overcome.

It was not until late morning that Siegfried finally woke. Rue was leaned against the wall, half-asleep herself, his head pillowed in her lap.

“Rue?” He reached out to touch her arm, his voice still slow with whatever they had given him. She helped him sit up, her exhaustion all but forgotten in lieu of such warmly-felt relief. She’d begun to worry something was terribly wrong. “W-What happened? What are we doing here?”

“You were sleepwalking,” she said, and had no doubt that this was the right thing to tell him. Even if it was a lie, it was a kind one. “I didn’t want to leave you alone when you came to rest here.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. He smiled, briefly fitting both of his hands to her face, his little fingers brushing soft over the skin that had darkened beneath her eyes. Together, they stood. “I would have been all right.”

She smiled in return, leaning against him as they walked back the way the men had first come, back to the looping corridor of stairs, back to the room that was theirs.

“I wanted to be sure,” she said, and turned her face into his shoulder, closing her eyes.

(It was a small thing, but still, Rue allowed herself a moment of pride. Only once had she touched the hilt of the knife she’d hidden beneath her gown – and then, with great prejudice.)

  
  


*

  


(What Rue does not know:

After the kingdom and the subjects and even the beloved prince have been lost to turned pages and forgotten, they will still speak of her, the men to their new families to people in ink-and-color lands impossibly far away from anything she ever knew. She will become her own story, whispered into the ears of inconsolable children at night who find comfort in it, not knowing that they are pieces of tales themselves – a princess strange with hair like night and jewel-red eyes, whose Brother was darkness and whose Sister was pain, who knew well of hate but even more of love, and was stronger than any of them for it.)

  
  


*

  


The night after the wedding, after the men have left and they have been left alone again, Rue finds herself at the end of something both exhilarating and unbearable. The castle creaks with every step and touch no matter how careful, the sound so vivid that it is a wonder it can even support their weight at all. Every stone ripples like water; the color of the walls smears in streaks across their open palms. The sky is too dark, a distant thundering on the horizon even though the air is too dry, too thin for rain, and Rue knows it is only a matter of time. Siegfried knows it, too – and yet, they cannot help but be happy too, married at last. It is a strange conflict, and so they compromise with themselves. Still in their wedding best, they drink wine from the cellars, not too much, just enough to ease the harshest edges of it all away. They dance, not caring that their movements lack their usual grace and precision, their shoes kicked off and their bare feet cool on the marble, twisting in clumsy circles as they cling to one another. They run up stairs and around dark corners like children; they dance in every room, no matter how small or plain, filling the spaces that had once known many more bodies, looking at all the things left on shelves that someone had used to think were precious. At times, they separate – Siegfried makes a point of straightening the tapestries hanging in the main hall, while Rue briefly loses herself in a nameless child’s bedroom, the bones in her fingers aching as they reach out to touch the painted faces of dolls left all in a row – but it is never for long. Rue pulls the ribbons in her hair loose one by one, leaving them strewn across the stone, a trail for him to follow. He finds her time and time again, having gathered them to give back to her.

Once they’ve finished, the night has grown old. The full moon burns through every window, their shadows silvered on the stone. It is inevitable, the warmth of her hand as it folds into the small of his back, the careful way he brushes the ties of her dress with his knuckles. “Rue,” he says, almost shy, and that is enough for her to press him back against the wall and kiss him fiercely. His hands fit to the curve of her neck, urging her closer; her fingers tangle in his shirt. Their heartbeats pulse in frantic rhythm, echoing close beneath their wrists and knuckles like little bursts of heat.

Upstairs, she peels her heavy dress off her shoulders, one sleeve then the other, letting the collar and lace fold into waves at her waist. The moonlight darkens the bow of her collarbone, bent low as she unties herself further; her skin burns, her arms striped red where the material clung too firmly to her. At the bed, her prince sits with his back to her. His shirt is half-shed, caught at his elbows. He looks to a far window, still.

“What is it?” She steps out of her last trimmings and lace, leaving them in glinting piles on the stone. In the darkness, her body only catches the odd burst of light as she crosses, shoulder and ankle and neck, her limbs slivered to pale, quick things lost in the night. “What’s the matter?”

For a moment, he doesn’t move. Rue sits on the other side of the bed. His skin shines with heat through the white of his shirt. She reaches out a hand to him, her fingertips ghosting across the bones in his back, and that is what makes him turn to her at last, stricken.

“What if I am to suffer the same fate?” He did not mean to ask it; she can tell as much from the hoarseness of the words, the way he touches his hand to his neck as though trying to cage them in, already far too late. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I have thought about it often, but I – I did not want to worry you.”

“It’s all right,” is all she can say in return, painfully soft. She does not want to tell him that she has thought about it too, has watched the men grow thin and slow and become mere caricatures of themselves, so brittle that she feared they might shatter when she touched them, might burn as though she was fire and they were ice. She does not want to tell him that she has dreamed of holding him in her arms and feeling him ebb away from her into fragments as thin and easily lost as the pieces of his heart, her hands wet with blood and ink, so dark she cannot tell the difference. That was what became of Tutu’s lady, after all; her heart burns with the mere memory of it. She does not want to say any of it, so she says nothing more.

“I am not like you,” he says. “I came from here, from the story. What if my time has only been extended? What if I one day, I will—”

She takes his face in her hands and muffles the rest with a kiss, not able to bear another word. Beneath her palms, she feels the steady line of his jaw, the muscles working in his throat. He turns to meet her fully. The buttons on his shirt graze her breast, cool, before he shuffles it past his wrists and off. He touches his hands to her wreath of hair, cradling her head beneath, and the feel of him is nothing at all like the men, like Tutu’s lady, who bent and smeared and half-crumpled at her very breath. He is solid, warm. She smiles against his mouth.

“I think,” she begins after pulling away, “that being outside the story has made you real. You think differently about things now. You make choices that you wouldn’t have made before.”

His mouth curls, nearly a smile but still heavy with worry. “Do you really think so?”

She nods, truly believing it herself now. “Listen to me. Mytho—”

She stops, her breath catching in her throat. She has not called him that in nearly a year now, since they were still struggling inside the story. The echo of it feels strange in her mouth, like a relic long-forgotten in a locked trunk or attic, old enough that dust scatters from it when touched. She doesn’t know why she said it. It seems a silly thing to do, now that it’s already happened.

“I’m sorry,” are the words that first come to mind, even though she knows there is no reason to apologize; his expression does not convey shock or anger in the least, only a wondering sort of interest. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” Siegfried says, and now he is truly smiling. He gently tangles a few loose strands of her hair around his fingers and tucks them past her ears. “Please call me that. My first name should stay here, buried with my people. One last sacrifice for all they have done for me.”

Rue nods and turns her face into his hand, smiling again too. Her own hand settles on his chest, just above the shudder of his ribs. With a chuckle, he allows her to press him down against the bed. Her arm ghosts over his stomach, settling against the inside of one of his upturned wrists. Slowly, she curls over him, her shadow folding over the edges of the bed, dark on the white sheets.

“I should think better than to question your judgment,” he murmurs into her long hair, spilt over her shoulders and onto his neck, scattering into strands across his cheek. “Thank you, Rue. You are right. You are always right, it seems.”

“I’d like to think so,” she says wryly, even though it is flattery, however genuine from his mouth, even though it would be painfully easy to think of times when her choices were quite the opposite. She will pretend tonight. She can give herself that, at least. “I’ve thought of an example of how you are different from before.”

“What would that be?”

“I very much doubt,” she says softly, playfully, but still edged with a careful shyness she cannot divorce from such a topic, “that such a beloved prince from the storybooks would ever have chosen a common girl whose only talent was dance, no matter what her background was.”

He looks up at her, something in his face softening so absolutely that it nearly brings her to tears. “I would have,” he says. “I would have found you, no matter what. I love you.”

He begins to say it again, but she shushes him with a laugh, with yet another kiss, not needing to hear the words again to know they are true. He smiles into her embrace, the tension easing away, and that is that. Like the moonlight, she covers him, and he, at last, surrenders.

  
  


*

  


Rue wakes to rain, heavy on her face. With a groan, she opens her eyes only to see the sky, bruised with violet, so close that for a moment, it feels like she could reach out and touch it. Thunder echoes, a startling sound, and that is what makes her sit up straight at last, confused, unsure if she is dreaming. She is lying in the field, next to the little pond all the birds would gather by in the summertime, its muddled surface stricken with circles that grow and fade as the rain worsens; her hair is heavy with it, so cold, making her shiver as it sticks to her bare neck. Dirt and grass catch beneath her nails. The castle, where is the castle, she thinks, and turns in all directions – but it is gone. She cannot even find the forest’s edge, the road leading into town. She only sees a great expanse of darkness in all directions, shuddering and surging closer, and only at that moment does she realize that it is all truly over now. Beside her, Mytho stirs, his hair darkened in spots with mud.

“Mytho,” she says. Again, he shifts, half-hidden beneath her dress and his shirt. A sudden rustling at her back makes Rue turn, her breath burning in her throat – but it is only the swans, the ones who first brought them here, drinking from the pond. They look to her with dull, glinting eyes.

She touches a hand to his face. “Mytho,” she says again. His cheek trembles beneath her fingertips as they sweep over; his eyes flutter then open, his face warm at the sight of her at first but quickly startled into something darker. He reacts in the same way. For a moment, he does not understand, he is confused why his face is wet with rain, why they are in the field and beside the pond instead of in their bedroom. It only takes one long look in all directions for the truth to sink in.

“It is,” is all he can get out. Stricken, he reaches for her. She takes his hand and holds it hard. By now, she has noticed the chariot, still resting on a near hill, the way the swans make clipped, frantic sounds as they draw their wings close and look towards it, as though they have known all along.

“We have to go,” she says.

He nods.

  
  


*

  


Their chariot flies for days and nights and does not seem to think of stopping. Mostly, they rest, exhausted by all that has happened. Still, Rue has never been a heavy sleeper. She wakes often, sometimes three times in an hour, jolted awake by a chill in the wind or Mytho shifting against her shoulder or simply her own thoughts, plentiful, much too loud and harsh inside her head. The fourth time it happens, she’s jolted out of a shapeless dream, only to see that it’s dawn. The sky above her is a distant expanse of swollen darkness, threads of color curling at the edges of it like fire. She can almost see the land beneath them now, houses and fields and forests outlined in shadow and the faintest rims of light. They look so small from far above, like toys, like miniatures she could hold in her hand if she wanted to, and for a moment, Rue can hardly breathe, consumed by the sight, by the world splitting open above and around her, endless and startlingly beautiful. Mytho breathes easily, asleep against her shoulder. Everything is quiet. Without meaning to, she starts to cry. The rising sun seeps over them, coloring her hands, warming her face. She wipes her eyes on the insides of her wrists and laughs a little to herself, not understanding how such a simple, inconsequential moment could make her so happy. But then again, she thinks, maybe such things don’t always have to make sense. She supposes that’s the best part about living outside stories.

Hours later, she wakes again to Mytho saying her name, his hand soft on her face. They’ve come to rest in what looks like a forest. Sunlight filters through shuddering branches in streaks, warm on the back of her neck when she stands. Through the trees, she swears can hear voices, distant and scattered.

“Where are we?” She asks, keeping the words hushed, as if not to disturb them.

Mytho steps out of the chariot. He turns back to take her hand, helping her down. “I’m not actually sure,” he admits after a moment. The wind ruffles their clothes. Her dress strays through some mud, a length of it darkened. “When I woke, we had already landed.”

Rue opens her mouth to answer, only to gasp instead as the chariot dissolves into light at her heels, burning so bright for a moment that they both raise an arm to shield their eyes. When they are able to look again, it is gone. The swans remain, their wings swollen above their white bodies, still tethered to ropes that now lay aimless in the grass. Mytho frees them, thanking them for all they’ve done; Rue soothes their ruffled feathers, her heart full when they nestle against her bent knees. At last, they fly away, the final pieces of the story having joined the rest, gone where they cannot follow. Now, they are truly on their own.

“Well,” Rue says. She takes his hand in hers. “Let’s find out where we are.”

It doesn’t take long. As it turns out, they have only landed in a brief expanse of trees. There is a road a few paces away filled with travelers, goods being transported, families with children that chase each other into the foliage then out again. In the distance are tall, red-stone walls, broken in the middle by a great, opened gate that leads into a town. Rue stares and stares, confused by how the sight can seem both new and familiar. Still, there is no mistaking the towers that appear at equal intervals around its edge, the grand, arching shape of a cathedral glimpsed through the gates, dark against the bright sky.

“Kinkan,” Mytho says, and he sounds as startled as she feels. They fall into pace with the others, ignoring the curious looks cast in their direction concerning their elaborate clothes. Rue swallows and clutches tighter to him, briefly overcome.

“We’re on the outside,” she murmurs against his shoulder. “That’s why it seems so strange. Before, there – there _was_ no outside. Or at least, not one we could fathom ourselves.”

Mytho nods. “The story that took place here is over,” he says. “It was one thing to know it, but to see it is quite another.”

Rue breathes in. She looks back over their shoulders, over the heads trailing behind them, following the path of the road over hills and past buildings, winding so far into the distance that she cannot even fathom where it might draw to an end. The last time she was in Kinkan, it was the entire world. Now, there is so much beyond it that she is nearly dizzy with the possibilities.

Once within the walls, they stop in the first shop they pass, reluctantly trading their clothes for money and something more practical to wear. The woman at the counter is red-faced with excitement, thinking them wealthy foreigners from a distant land, and pays them handsomely. The crowns, they keep. Rue dresses quickly in a backroom then looks at herself in the store window, not able to remember the last time she did so. She takes in the shape of her face, the length of her neck and shoulders and legs, and realizes for the first time that she is older. It’s such a simple thing, but still, she has to convince herself of it. She is taller than she was before, just a little, but there is something more, something she can’t quite place her finger on. Or is it only her imagination? She watches people passing behind her in the reflection and thinks them all older-looking, even faces she can’t remember from before. It must be true. Time has passed, after all. They spent a year inside the story, but maybe it has been more here. Change is something else they will have to learn in this strange, new world.

Mytho emerges from the shop then, adjusting the cuffs on his new shirt. He, too, looks older. Rue realizes it with a jolt, the line of his shoulder more solid, something like age having taken root in his face, slight but still a noticeable shadow when he turns to look up at the sky. She finds herself relieved by this more than anything else, knowing for sure now that he has truly become as real a person as she is. He holds a simple bag containing their crowns in one hand.

“I hope it’s all right that we kept these,” he says, his voice heavy as he looks down at it. “I know it’s…”

He falters, then, but Rue knows what he means to say. They are not truly royalty any longer, but it is still too precious a memory, too familiar. She takes the bag from him and slings it over her shoulder before leaning in to kiss him, quick and chastely, like young sweethearts still unsure of themselves might. There is nothing wrong with wanting to remember, she tells him with it, and he smiles against her mouth, understanding. It’s all right, she tells him.

They continue on. In the distance, she hears the song of the church bell. Students from the Academy begin to pass by, clad in the blue and gray uniforms they themselves had once worn, talking and laughing amongst themselves. They look to her and Mytho briefly but wonderingly, as if remembering them from a dream, before passing by. A soft-eyed girl brushes her shoulder, a pair of worn toe shoes tucked under her arm. The bones in Rue’s feet ache with the mere memory of it, a welcomed, wanting pain. Again, she looks back towards the gate, the landscape bright and unclear in the distance.

“I think,” she says, sure of it now, “that I would like to travel. Maybe we could join a troupe, or simply perform on our own.”

Mytho nods. “That sounds wonderful. To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought much about what we would do next. Did you not want to stay here for a while first?”

Rue doesn’t know. The town still feels like her home, somewhat, but it has eaten the years away and left her with little else, so near and familiar to every one of her bones that it’s almost too much to bear. “I suppose,” she concedes, as they pass the pizza shop. A family of cats is milling under the tables, brown and white in color. “I suppose there is still much I could do at the Academy.”

“Only if that’s what you want, though,” Mytho is quick to say. He turns fully towards her, taking both of her hands in his. “Say the word and we’ll turn and go now. It may take me a while to discover what I am most interested in doing myself, so in the meantime, I am yours to do what you will with.” With a smile, he steps back in a lighthearted bow and kisses her knuckles. Two girls in Academy uniforms giggle at the sight as they pass, whispering fervently to one another. “Lead the way, my princess.”

She laughs and pulls him back upright. “All right,” she says, easy and warm, smiling fully now too. “I’ll think about it.”

They keep walking, making a few more stops as they pass, first at a florist’s stand where Mytho insists on buying a rose she paused to admire (“we will need to save some of this for things like food, you do realize,” she comments wryly but does not refuse it, her face coloring as she inhales the sweet scent of it) and then in front of the gurgling fountain before the church, the heat already so stark, the water cool as they dip their hands in up to the wrists, and Rue thinks, not for the first time but the firmest by far: they will be fine. She cannot pretend it will always be this easy. Sacrifices have been made, and she knows more than anyone that such things strip you and leave you in newer, rawer skin, thin to the touch, easily worn further down. There will be sadness and there will be pain, she is sure – but she has only just wet her toes in the ocean that is happiness, and she must believe that there will be much of that as well, endless shades and depths that she will be glad to welcome in and learn every inch of. Wandering around another corner, they notice a little girl, fair-haired and half-drowned in tears, crouched over on the stone. It’s as simple as a reflex to Mytho; he kneels at once and says simple, kind things to make her smile, jokes and compliments, reassurances. Rue keeps her distance and watches. She is sorely familiar with her lack of experience when it comes to such basic, necessary things as kindness and comfort; she isn’t sure if it will ever become an easy response instead of something that feels foreign, so far away from her. Still, when the girl finally stands and wipes her face dry, she holds out the rose to her, struck by an impulse, and is nearly overcome by the light that fills the child’s eyes, so genuine that it takes her breath away.

“Rue,” Mytho says, a sudden urgency in his voice. She is still looking over her shoulder, watching the girl go, marveling at how her little fingers stay curled around the swollen petals, protecting it as though it is something truly precious, irreplaceable. “Rue,” he says again, and touches her arm. She turns.

They are standing a few paces away from the front of a shop, shimmering clothing arranged in the window. There is a single man standing in front of it, looking in. He is tall, his dark hair tied back, his shoulders clearly sturdy when he turns further away from them, oblivious.

“Fakir,” Mytho says, a moment before she thinks the name herself. He does not say it loudly; Fakir doesn’t notice. Rue is surprised by the look of him. His face is much gentler then she remembers – though maybe that was because all he ever greeted her with were angry demands and cruel eyes. She wonders if time has changed him, eased away his harshest edges. Time, or something else entirely.

Rue swallows. She looks around anxiously, beyond him, back the way they came. She shakes her head when Mytho looks to her, silencing his question before he can even ask it; she knows she cannot articulate what is in her head. It is silly to have thought it, so silly (of course she would not be here of course of _course_ ) but still, the words gather, harsh in her throat, hurting her, where, where is –

“Fakir!”

Neither she nor Mytho had spoken again. The door to the shop flies open, the bell atop it jingling noisily, and – and _Ahiru_ , human, so much taller now, stumbles out, her braid dancing around her as she turns towards him. Her face can only been seen in slivers as she stands with her back to them; she speaks quickly and excitedly about something Rue can’t hear more than a stray word or two of. After a moment, she takes Fakir’s hand in hers and holds it tight. He doesn’t pull away. “Just one more place, I _promise_ ,” she says, half-laughing, and turns around only to come face-to-face with them at last, Fakir pulled up alongside her.

At first, no one moves. For a fearful moment, Rue is sure that they have forgotten as well, time having ground their memories into ash – but then Ahiru’s face lights up, as hopelessly warm and open as it looked the night they searched for Mytho together, as the first time she’d first called them friends as though it were the simplest thing in the world. Yes, Rue thinks, her mouth heavy with a smile she cannot hold back a moment longer. Nothing has changed at all.

“Rue! Mytho! You’re back!”

She only has a moment to spread her arms before Ahiru practically tackles her. Her small hands knit at the dip in her back, squeezing hard; Rue’s dark hair spills over her face and she doesn’t even move to brush it away, laughing instead. “I missed you,” she whispers into her shoulder, so softly that no one but them hears it. Rue can only cling to her tighter, her heart fit to burst.

“How,” she finally manages to say after Ahiru has hugged Mytho as well and turned to face both of them. “How are you –“

“Oh!” Ahiru looks herself over with a befuddled grin, as though just recognizing the change herself. “That’s right! You didn’t know I turned back! It was super amazing, it really was, you won’t even _believe_ what—”

“It’s a long story,” Fakir interjects. He touches her shoulder, his voice edged with a note of familiar sternness. Still, he doesn’t look away from Ahiru for a long moment, and Rue hides the wry quirk of her lip against her hand, understanding at last. “Welcome back,” he says to them both with more warmth than she thought him capable of, and Mytho reaches out to clasp his hand in turn.

“Whoops,” Ahiru says, her face reddening. “I’m sorry! I’m sure you want to rest first, you must be exhausted after such a long trip! Are you hungry? We have plenty of food at home, anything you could want! Do you want to come?” She bounces on the balls of her feet. “They’ll be plenty of time for me to tell you all the long stories I have then, I’m sure!”

Mytho laughs. “What a coincidence,” he says. “We have a long story to share as well.”

It’s clear he would like to go, but still, he looks to Rue, obviously not wanting to commit until she’s made her own choice. He doesn’t have to wait long; there is honestly no question.

“Of course,” she says, and smiles. “Of course we do.”

And that is that. Ahiru takes her hand and begins to pull her along down the road, talking endlessly about little things, friends and dance and the Academy, about all that’s changed since they’ve been gone, the sound of her voice spilling past her turned shoulders and over Rue like sunlight. Fakir walks behind them, seeming as distant as ever at first, only to surprise her when she nearly trips and he reaches out to help steady her, his hand ghosting across her back, brief and warm. Mytho follows at her side, holding her other hand. She looks over at him and he looks back, smiling, nodding just a little, as though to say _yes, this, this is it, this is why we will be fine_. Rue squeezes both his and Ahiru’s hands tight; she doesn’t doubt it for a moment. They surround her, keeping her safe and warm. They are all with her, for better or for worse.

Yes, she thinks. She wouldn’t mind staying for a while.


End file.
